Re: concordance & genesis (edited)

Paul Seely wrote:
> I said,
>>>The idea that Gen 1:6-9 says there was a sea above a solid sky and Gen 1:14-17 says the celestial bodies are below these waters is not just the interpretation of modern interpreters. It was universally interpreted this way by Jews and Christians until modern times. (I have documented this in my paper, "The firmament and the water above, Part II: The Meaning of 'The Water above the Firmament" in Gen 1:6-8," Westminster Theological Journal 54 (1992) 31-46)<<<

> Peter replied,
>> "Universally"? You are really overstating your case! You appear to have a somewhat biased set of sources. Here I quote some relevant comments from just some of the interpreters' works I happen to have at home:

>> - L.F. Church (ed.), "Matthew Henry's Commentary" (Marshall Morgan & Scott, London, 1960): "... Let there be a firmament, an expansion, so the Hebrew word signifies, like a sheet spread, or a curtain drawn out. The firmament is not a wall of partition ... The use and design of it - to divide the waters from the waters, that is, to distinguish between the waters that are wrapped up in the clouds and those that cover the sea. God has, in the firmament of his power, chambers, store-chambers, whence he watereth the earth..."
>> - E.F. Kevan, "Genesis", in: F. Davidson, A.M. Stibbs &E.F. Kevan (eds.), "The New Bible Commentary" (Inter-Varsity, London, 1963): "Firmament (1:6). An expanse. This is the formation of the atmosphere.
>> - "The New Scofield Reference Bible" (Oxford University Press, New York, 1967): "Second day: vapor above, water below ... Fourth day: sun, moon, and stars become visible".
>> - G.L. Archer, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties" (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1982): "Genesis 1:6-8 presents the second stage: the formation of an 'expanse' (raqía') that separated between moisture in suspension in the sky and moisture condensed enough to remain on the earth's surface. The term raqía' does not mean a beaten-out metal canopy, as some writers have alleged - no ancient culture ever taught such a notion in its concept of the sky - but simply means 'a stretched-out expanse'... Genesis 1:14-19 reveals that in the fourth creative stage God parted the cloud cover enough for direct sunlight to fall on the earth and for accurate observation of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars to take place. Verse 16 should not be understood as indicating the creation of the heavenly bodies for the first time on the fourth creative day..."
>> - R.C. Newman &H.J. Eckelmann, "Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth" (IBRI, Hatfield, PA, 1989): "The word raqiah, here translated 'expanse' (KJV: 'firmament'), means something spread out... Most scholars associate it with the sky, but some see it as a huge dome and others as the atmosphere. It appears to us that the firmament is the atmosphere for several reasons. (1) Nothing is said of any space between the firmament and the lower waters... (2) The birds are said to fly 'upon the face' of the firmament... not below... (3) The Hebrews were well aware that the air supported water in the form of clouds, and the phrase 'waters which were above the expanse' is actually broad enough in the Hebrew to describe clouds floating in the sky."

>> Do you want to counter that you said "universally interpreted this way... until modern times", not "until today", tacitly excluding "modern times"? At least Matthew Henry's Commentary dates from the early 1700's, and it was highly recommended by C.H. Spurgeon. Henry certainly was pre-modern-cosmology, and the others prove that your interpretation is not accepted by all scholars in more recent times. <<

>PS: I grant that "modern" was not the best term to use, but it was the rise of modern astronomy in the 16th century that caused a serious change of interpretation. The salient point of departure is in round figures c. 1550, when Luther would not back down from what the biblical text says, and Calvin opted for the "common sense" interpretation of clouds for the waters above the firmament. He made no attempt to exegete the passage in either its biblical or historical (for which he had no information) context.<

>Regardless of the word "modern," 1500 years of Christians interpreting Gen 1:6-9 as referring to a solid firmament with a sea above it still says that this interpretation is not properly labeled a "prevailing dogma among many current interpreters" as if only biased and unthinking interpreters would say such a thing. It is the historic interpretation of the Church which you are rejecting, and the Church was carrying it on from the Jews before them.<

So, with Calvin, I am in quite reasonable company, and Luther did other
blunders, as well. And didn't Augustine warn his christian brethren not
to make the christian faith contemptible by ignoring what we would call
contemporary science? He probably wouldn't stick to a traditional
interpretation, just because it was tradition. In any case, I don't
think an appeal to tradition has much value. There are denominations
with clearly unbiblical but unchangeable dogmas in their tradition.

I am not convinced of your claim that a belief in a solid firmament
(which would go with a flat earth) was so "universal" up to about 1550
AD. Russell, J.B. (1997), Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern
Historians (Praeger, Westport, CT) demonstrates the recent origin of the
"three-story-universe" myth. And the claim of an universal belief in an
ocean above the firmament is even less believable. Even a belief in the
heavenly luminaries being fixed to some kind of solid sphere would go
with a multiplicity of concentric full spheres carrying the different
types of luminaries moving differently, not a universe composed of a
flat earth, a half-dome and an ocean above it.

But no matter what cosmology any earlier Jews and Christians might have
considered in interpreting Genesis, this is not the relevant question
for us at all, but what interpretation is most reasonable for us. The
biblical text was also written for _us_. You start with the assumption
that a biblical text can have only one "correct" interpretation, and
that this must necessarily be coached in the worldview of the ignorance
shared by the original writer with all of his contemporaries. You are
completely ignoring any influence of the divine original Author. Of
course, he would not dictate any modern science, but gently prod the
prophet to use language compatible with the sets of _facts_ known by any
cultures of _all_ times. These ideas of mine do not constitute a fixed
speculation I am about to defend at all costs, but they represent what I
consider the currently best over-all interpretation of what is given in
both general and special revelation.

>I will make only a few comments on your concordist commentaries. They seem to agree that the expanse is the atmosphere and the clouds are the waters above the atmosphere. First of all, in the biblical account "the waters above" are half of the tehom (the Deep) mentioned in 1:2 which is a sea; so the waters above are half of a sea. There is no evidence that this sea turned into clouds. "Clouds" is thus a gratuitous addition to the Bible.<

This argumentation sounds like a YEC-type literalism. Anthropomorphic,
everyday language would be used normally in a biblical narrative. Any
simple observer knows that not all clouds are at the same hight and
would not consider the expanse of the sky to reach to a certain fixed
hight, above which all clouds would reside. I don't think any of the
commentaries cited would go for your formulation of their "agreement".
Nor would any of the old Hebrews (except those who believed in a "sea
above a firmament", if any). I agree that the tehom in Gen.1:2 is a sea,
but your conclusion that "the waters above" must be "half of a sea"
doesn't follow at all. Any reader of Gen.1 (no matter how early) knows
exactly that the only aggregate state of water that "water above" can
have is gaseous or mist or clouds, and that any liquid water comes down
as soon as the droplets are large enough. And how could a sea above a
dome stay there, without flowing off at the sides? These thoughts would
make the dome universe a myth rather than a cosmology for most thinking
persons among the ancients.

>Secondly, Gen 1:7 uses the prepositions me'al plus lamedh to tell where the water above is located in reference to the firmament. This is the very same prepositional phrase with the very same object (a firmament) as is used in Ezek 1:25. In that verse it is used to describe a voice coming from above a firmament. There is no question that the voice is coming from a man on a throne that is above the top of the firmament, not embedded in the center of the firmament. Indeed, the phrase used, me'al plus lamedh. never means "in" or "within." Consequently, even if the concordist interpretation were not ignoring the contextual meaning of Scripture by transforming the sea of Gen 1:2-7 into clouds, these clouds would have to be above the top of the atmosphere, not embedded in it. That is what the prepositions in Ezek 1:26/Gen 1:7 demand. Consequently, the supposed clouds would have to be at least 30 miles above the earth, that is, above the top of the atmosphere. That is three times!
 higher than even the highest ranging clouds reach! <

A simple observer would not consider the atmosphere (the expanse,
raqia^) to have a fixed upper limit, but when there are clouds, he would
describe them as "above" this expanse through which he sees. Why do you
think that the raqia^ in Ezek.1:25 is solid? It is part of a
supernatural vision God granted Ezekiel. What does it have in common
with the raqia^ of Gen.1:7? If you take it as something present in
Ezekiel's physical environment, the one in Ezek. is much smaller and
contained in the one of Gen., but both are expanses. The throne above it
and the one sitting on the throne belong to Ezekiel's vision, and
whatever physical properties they might have assumed, there is no reason
to suppose they would _need_ a solid support. And nobody claims they
were "in" the raqia^. Your conclusion about the clouds are therefore
entirely unfounded (pun arose unintentionally). And taking a
(questionable) modern definition of a "top of the atmosphere" is
completely irrelevant for the anthropomorphic language of an ancient
Hebrew. With this, you are using the type of unreasonable
hyperliteralism which you falsely accuse the "concordists" of using.

>Thirdly, Gen 1:14, 15 and 17 say the heavenly bodies were IN the firmament, which could mean either in the fabric of the firmament or within the space under the firmament. If the firmament is the atmosphere, then the sun, moon and stars are IN the atmosphere or within its bounds. <

Again, you are picking one detail of our interpretation out of its
context, combining it with one of your own presuppositions, producing
nonsense. Of course, the text's "in" is accepted, but neither the
"heavenly bodies" nor the "firmament" of your claim. In our 1999 PSCF
paper, we wrote: "On day 4, celestial bodies were not created, but
became visible as 'lights'. Their origin goes back to the cosmological
development initiated 'in the beginning'... Previously, light of
celestial bodies had reached the earth's surface only in scattered form,
such as on an overcast day. The text does not say that bodies were
'affixed to the firmament', but that God 'gave' the lights (the light
rays, _not_ their sources) 'into the raqia^ of the skies', the region
which previously could not be reached by direct light. Now changed
atmospheric conditions caused the previously permanent cloud cover to
break open, so that for the first time the celestial bodies appeared as
'lights in the sky'. Over some time, the lights were being 'prepared'
[^asah], coming through hazily first, more clearly later... They were to
provide space and time indications required by many organisms." (Of
course, once more, we are not claiming the biblical text to "teach
modern science", but to be compatible with it.)

>Finally, I must comment on Archer's statement that no ancient culture taught that the sky was a beaten out metal canopy. It is true that most cultures teach that the sky is made of stone (e.g., Babylonian) or maybe earth; but, the Egyptian Pyramid Texts (c. 2000 BC) seem to speak of the sky as being made of metal. Max Muller accepted this idea and went on to say the Egyptians apparently believed the firmament was made specifically of iron. He says, "This conception of a metal dome explains some expressions of later times, such as the name of iron, be-ni-pet ('sky metal'), or the later word for 'thunder,' khru-bai (literally, 'sound of the metal') i.e., thunder was evidently explained as the beating of the giant sheets of metal which constituted the sky." Jews at least considered the possibility that it might be made of metal. They speculated as to whether it was made of: clay or copper or iron (3 Apoc. Bar. 3.7 <

Maybe Archer's statement was, in this sense, not quite correct. Maybe
your claim that _all_ ancient cultures and people believed in a solid
sky is not quite correct, either. But we are neither talking about
Babylonians or Egyptians, nor about apocryphal writings, but about
revelational biblical texts. The only conceivable support for a raqia^
being made of hammered metal can be found in 4 places in Ex., Num.,
Isa., Jer., where the verb raqa^ is used for spreading out metal into
thin sheets. Of course, the basic meaning is "to spread out thin" and
need not have anything to do with metal or other solid materials. In 4
places, raqa^ means to spread out earth or sky, and in 2 places to stamp
with one's feet on the earth, and in 1 place to destroy enemies "like
the mud of the streets". On the other hand, in all of its 16
occurrences, the noun raqia^ _never_ refers to any metal and never to
any demonstrably solid material.

>PS: Given that this was also the view of the Babylonians and Egyptians in OT times, are we really supposed to believe that the writer of Genesis had no such idea in mind and was simply misinterpreted for the first 3000 years as by modern OT scholars?<

>>PR; Even if the conclusion from Babylonian and Egyptian myths to the beliefs
of the Genesis writer were true - for which we have no evidence -, we
cannot put biblical texts on a same footing with extra-biblical ones, if
there is any such thing as divine inspiration. I am not talking about
"mechanical dictation" or "overpowering" of the human writer or
"Bible-as-science-textbook" - see my post to Dave Siemens for more
details.<<

>PS: Actually there is good evidence that the writer of Genesis was influenced in his "world picture" not his "world view" by the Babylonians. As to inspiration, you are confusing it with revelation. The contrast in theology between the biblical and Babylonian creation stories speaks of unique revelation to the Hebrews, but nothing indicates that it is any different in its "science." A 100% inspired writer can still speak in terms of the science of his own day. There is no biblical proof that he will not do this. The idea that an inspired writer cannot do this is just a rationalistic extra-biblical assumption that pleases human reason. The Bible does not teach it. Nor is it needed to make the Bible relevant to all generations: The revelation in Gen 1 that there is one supreme God who made the sky is clear to all generations, whether they thought it was solid as they did for the first 1500 years of Church history, or whether they thought it was not solid as they do now.<

I continue to emphasize that I never claimed that God is revealing
modern science through the biblical texts, and you continue ignoring
this. Nor did I claim that a biblical writer _cannot_ write in terms of
ancient "world pictures", but there is no proof, biblical or otherwise,
that any of them _did_ so. The Bible doesn't teach this opinion of
yours, either. I am not confusing inspiration with revelation as you
claim. But I insist that inspiration implies that its operation need not
be restricted to its theological revelational content. Nor did I claim
that the revelation in Gen.1 that there is one supreme God who made the
sky is not clear to all generations, whatever their world picture. But
the fact is that many are turned away from the Bible today because they
are told that Gen.1 (and the whole Bible) presents either a YEC picture
or a three-story cosmology derived from Babylonian myths. And the fact
is that, instead, the text itself allows a reasonable interpretation
which is astonishingly compatible with modern science, without taking
recourse to ancient myths utterly incomprehensible to any modern - and
probably also to most people of the last 1500 pre-modern years.

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)