Re: question

At 02:03 AM 6/6/6, Paul Seely wrote:

>Pardon me, but, a few corrections are needed
>here. One, I (Paul Seely) did not write
>Inspiration and Incarnation. It was written by
>Dr. Peter Enns, Professor of OT at Westminster
>Theol Semy. I have encouraged people to read it
>because it is one of the few evangelical books
>on the OT (and NT) which is actually intellectually honest.

@ David explains below how the mix-up
happened. I haven't read the book, but you
should expect to get requests to defend what
appears to be a subjective opinion about what is
and is not "intellectually honest" about Enn's conclusions.

>Two, the quotes objecting to my views are from
>two YECs, one being Holding, the other unnamed.
>They are not from George Murphy, who essentially
>agrees with me. Perhaps George can tell you how this dialogue got so confused.

@ George did explain it (see below)

And BTW - you've misrepresented Holding's
views. He is neutral and hasn't taken a position on OE/YEC.

Here he is in his own words:

"Why don't you write about evolution?" Every once
in a while I get a smug letter (containing far
more than this phrase to indicate the smugness,
as a note to the literarily impaired looking to
impugn my honesty, and unless they have been
reading my correspondence, have nothing to say on
the subject) from some skeptic or another asking
me this question. I'd like to at least give them a point for consistency:

Those who believe that it is possible to become
an expert commentator on Hebrew exegetical and
literary methods merely by reading Thomas Paine
would no doubt think it likewise possible for me
to become an instant expert on creation/evolution
issues by merely picking up Dawkins' Blind
Watchmaker and From Goo to You by Way of the Zoo.

Unlike these Skeptics, I respect the knowledge of
those more informed than I am (as in the hard
sciences) and do not presume to know their stuff better than they do. ...

..The reason I do not buy or sell the evolution
story is that while I cannot comment upon the
"hard science" issues, when it comes to things I
do know, it is all too clear that the strongest
promoters of evolutionary theory could simply not
reason their way out of a paper bag, even one
with arrows painted inside in bright neon and a
tour guide pointing to the exit. I obviously do
not have the science knowledge to know whether or
not evolution is true. .." ~ J.P.
Holding http://www.tektonics.org/af/evologic.html

>Three, if I may suggest it, read something I
>have written (some of my papers are on the ASA
>website), then decide for yourself what to think. ~ Paul

@ Will do. Based upon Holding's response to
what you have written, I think I have a pretty
good idea of what to expect. Excerpt:

Does the Bible say Earth is Flat? A Response to Paul H. Seely
© 2001 James Patrick Holding. All Rights
Reserved. [Last Modified: 09 March 2006]
First published in Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 14(3):51­54, 2000
http://www.trueorigin.org/flatearth01.asp

Critic Paul H. Seely claims that the Bible
teaches that the earth is a flat disc consisting
of a single continent floating on a circular
sea. In so doing, he once again makes the
mistake of reading into equivocal biblical
language definite statements of cosmology.
In a previous article,1 I explored and refuted
the contentions of Paul H. Seely that the Bible
taught that the raqiya‘ (‘firmament’) was a solid
dome over the earth. In this study, we will
address a subsequent article by Seely in which he
argues that the Bible teaches that the earth is a
flat disc with a surrounding sea and a continent
that floats upon this sea. We find, not
surprisingly, that Seely follows much the same
line of argument as he did in his previous articles:

‘When a biblical text is interpreted outside of
its historical context, it is often unconsciously
interpreted in terms of the reader’s own culture,
time and beliefs. This has happened more than
once to Genesis 1. To avoid distorting Genesis 1
in this way, the serious exegete will insist upon
placing this chapter within its own historical
context. When we do this, the meaning of “earth”
and “seas” in Gen 1:10 is found to be quite
different from the modern western notions.’2

Following this statement is an impressive and
informative list proving that several early
‘scientifically naïve’ societies thought either
that the earth was flat and/or was surrounded by
water on all sides, upon which the land
floated. Seely determines from this data that:

‘Within its historical context, therefore, the
conception of the “earth” in Gen 1 is most
probably that of a single continent in the shape
of a flat circular disc. In addition the Hebrews
were influenced via the patriarchs by
Mesopotamian concepts and via Moses and their
time in Egypt by Egyptian concepts. It is,
therefore, all the more historically probable
that the writer and first readers of Gen 1
thought of the earth as a single continent in the
shape of a flat circular disc.’3

‘Being a scientifically naive people, it is
probable that like other scientifically naive
tribal peoples the Hebrews thought of the earth
as being surrounded by a circular sea and
floating upon that single surrounding sea.’4

Seely appears to be assuming that ‘scientific
knowledge’, i.e. the conclusions of modern
science, is the only source of true
knowledge. And, amazingly for an author in a
Reformed theological journal, Seely seems to be
forgetting that Scripture is propositional
revelation from God and therefore is also a
source of true knowledge ­ in fact, it is the
ultimate and final source of such knowledge!

Seely continues:

‘The writer and first readers of Gen 1 also
inherited Mesopotamian concepts about the natural
world from the patriarchs and no doubt were
influenced by Egyptian concepts during their stay
in Egypt. Moses, in fact, was “educated in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22; Exod
2:10). It is highly probable, therefore, that
the writer and first readers of Gen 1 defined the
sea in the same way that all people in the
ancient Near East did, namely, as a single
circular body of water in the middle of which the
flat earth-disc floated and from which all wells,
springs and rivers derived their water.’4

This argument is very weak indeed. The
patriarchs worshipped God and believed His Word,
not Mesopotamian myths. There is absolutely no
indication in Scripture that they held any such
beliefs. Seely must demonstrate this, not simply
assert it. Also, it is highly unlikely that
Moses and the Israelites were influenced by
Egyptian concepts. Although Moses was educated
as an Egyptian, he was also the recipient of
divine revelation which stands in stark contrast
to any Egyptian teaching. Furthermore, the
Israelites lived separately from the Egyptians
(in the land of Goshen) and apparently maintained
their culture and customs and did not intermarry
with the Egyptians. Therefore, it is highly
unlikely that they would have been educated
alongside the Egyptians ­ and even more so when
they became the Egyptians’ slaves.
In my previous article, I demonstrated the
illogic and the danger of this position in terms
of biblical inerrancy, and we need not detain
ourselves by elaborating on all of these
points. Instead, we will proceed directly to the
scriptural citations at issue and show that, once
again, Seely is either misinterpreting what he is
reading or else is taking advantage of equivocal
terminology to read his own ideas into the text.

Gone Flat

The programmatic text for this section is Genesis 1:10:

‘And God called the dry land Earth; and the
gathering together of the waters called the Seas:
and God saw that it was good.’

By itself this verse tells us virtually nothing
about the nature of the earth and seas. It is so
equivocal that one may read into the text either
a flat earth or a round one. It is worthwhile to
remind the reader of one point made in our
earlier article, that it is just as much possible
that the many pagan parallels cited by Seely are
just as easily read to be distortions of the
original and correct information about the nature
of the earth. In other words, they could have
misread the message and forced an interpretation
upon the data just as Seely has done!
Nevertheless, Genesis 1:10 certainly does not
indicate in and of itself a flat earth.5

Seely next attempts to read out from the text the
idea of a flat earth based on the presumption
that a solid firmament is also taught; this point
we refuted in our previous article. Finally,
Seely deals with some Scriptures outside of
Genesis that concern the nature of the earth, beginning with Isaiah 40:22:

‘It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the
earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ….’

Apologists dealing with this issue often cite
Isaiah 40:22 with the explanation that Hebrew,
having no specific word for sphere, may here
indicate a spherical earth. Of course we may
also read into the text a flat circle, as Seely
does. Interestingly, Seely attempts to confirm
his own interpretation by making an error exactly
like that of a skeptic I once confronted on this issue:

‘If Isaiah had intended to speak of the earth as
a globe, he would probably have used the word he
used in 22:18 (dur), meaning “ball”.’6

Dur, however, no-more inidicates sphericity than
the word used in Isaiah 40:22, for it is used by
Isaiah elsewhere thus (Isaiah 29:3):

‘And I will camp against thee round about, and
will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.’

Obviously, unless they were professional gymnasts
as well as tacticians, the soldiers could not
camp in the shape of a sphere around the city!
Based on this, this word appears to be making a
statement about a circular pattern rather than specifying a given shape.7

Seely offers two citations in support of a ‘flat
earth’ view that we need not spend much time on:
Daniel 4:10, 11 and 20, and Job 37:3. The Daniel
passage is actually a statement by a pagan king,
which doesn’t mean that the Bible endorses that
view. And it is a vision, and is therefore not
intended to be a picture of reality any more than
Pharaoh’s dream of cannibalistic cows and even
cannibalistic ears of wheat (Genesis 41). And
Job 37:3 hardly requires a flat-earth reading ­
it merely states that lightning occurs all over
the earth. Even if it did teach a flat-earth
reading, it would prove only that Elihu believed
such a thing ­ not everything reported in the Bible is endorsed in the Bible.
As is standard to note in such cases, the
statements of characters in the Bible are not
automatically granted inerrancy unless the
speaker is either God or indicated to be inspired
of God. One statement that is made by God that
deserves serious consideration is found in Job 38:13:

‘That it might take hold of the ends of the
earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?’

Isolated from its context, this verse might be
taken, as Seely supposes, to refer to a pancake-like earth:

‘In a clearly cosmological context, not just
local, this verse speaks of dawn grasping the
earth by its “extremity or hem” (kanap; cf. Num
15:38; 1 Sam 15:27) and shaking the wicked out of
it. The verse is comparing the earth to a
blanket or garment picked up at one end and
shaken. A globe is not really comparable to a
blanket or garment in this way. You cannot pick
up a globe at one end. It does not even have an end.’8

However, the full context of this verse makes it
clear that the meaning Seely finds in it is not
intended at all. How does the dawn ‘grasp’
anything? Is Seely also suggesting some sort of
primitive belief in an anthropomorphic sun god?
Are the wicked literally ‘shaken’ by the sunrise?
Is the bringing of dawn accompanied by the sight
of nighttime burglars rolling through the dusty
streets of villages like tumbleweeds? Clearly
this verse refers to no more than the visible
horizon that the dawn ‘grasps’ as the sun
rises. It is phenomenological and poetic in every sense of its expression.

Sea Change [snip] Continue here: http://www.trueorigin.org/flatearth01.asp

*
On Tue, 6/ 6/ 6/ at 06:40:53 -0400 George Murphy wrote:

Paul is right - the quote in question isn't
mine. It's from a Tweb discussion on "Questions
about the theology of the cross in creation" that
someone else had begun to discuss my approach to
theology-science matters. .... Maybe this isn't a
big deal but since I agree with Paul on this
matter I didn't want to be represented wrongly. ~

@ I would want to set the record straight
myself if I had been misquoted. I should have
been more careful and apologize for attributing
the quote to you. Even though it's no
excuse, the quote had been repeated so many
times in that thread that I became confused about who said what originally.

*
On Tue, 6/ 6/ 6 at 08:28:39 -0400, David Opderbeck wrote:

And I started this mess by saying "Seely" when I
meant "Enns"!!! Sorry!! I had just read an
email from Paul before I typed that so I guess
his name was stuck in my head! ~

@ If I had checked for the book on Amazon, I
would have seen that the author was Enns. Don't
feel badly - the whole episode was a comedy of errors.

~ Janice
Received on Tue Jun 6 11:26:19 2006