Re: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug

Hello, Dick. Here's my response to a couple of your points.

Dick writes:
The Septuagint says a “fountain” rose up which is a direct reference to
irrigation. The “fountains of the deep” refers to the irrigation works in Sumer
that were overflowed at the time of the flood.
[PTM]
The septuagint makes a terrible error in translating the word "fog" or "mist"
to become "fountain". It likely represents the bad science of the
translators, but in any case it certainly doesn't represent the Hebrew text. As for
"fountains of the deep" found in Genesis 7, this is a completely different Hebrew
word than the one in the passage I was discussing. The creation account in
Gen.2 is discussing why there are no wild plants, and the reason is because
there is no rain, and so it says God solved the problem by causing a "fog" or
"mist" (i.e., rain clouds) to rise up from the earth and water the whole surface
of the ground. This cured the problem of no rain and therefore wild plants
could grow henceforth. In parallel (and **not** chronologically) the author
says that there were no cultivated plants because there was no man to cultivate
them, and therefore God made man. This cured the problem of there being no
mankind and therefore cultivated plants could grow henceforth. To say as you do
that irrigation projects were intended by the first part of this parallel
structure is not only to mix up completely different Hebrew words but to
completely undermine the parallelism in the text. I always doubt arguments that rest
on the interpretation of single words and I always trust arguments that render
the overall structure of the text crystal clear.

As an example of the above statement, there were some posts recently on the
scholars who explained the structure of the flood account and thereby showed
that the documentary hypothesis is a failure in that part of the Bible. When
someone can lay out such a compelling and clear structure in a text, then you
know they have really solved it. It's the same way in physics. When you find a
theory that has vast, explanatory power and is elegant and simple, then you
know it is probably correct. Mark Futato did exactly this in explaining the
structure of Gen.1 & 2. I highly recommend his work, which can be found here:
http://www.thirdmill.org/newfiles/mar_futato/TH.Futato.Rained.1.pdf
Dick writes:
In the Atrahasis epic, the phrases "fountains of the deep" or "fountain of
the deep" appear four times. In all instances, fountain(s) pertain to "fields,"
[PTM]
Since the Atrahasis epic is dealing with the flood, your point is true but
does not overturn the meaning of the word "fog" in Gen.2.

Dick writes:
Mark may argue “persuasively,” but he hasn’t a clue about ANE literature.
You have to know where to look.
As far as I know, Mark actually agrees with Paul Seeley and others about the
ANE cosmology found in Scripture, so the comment about Mark is misplaced. My
disagreement with "accomodation" is not over the presence of ANE cosmology in
Scripture (e.g., I accept that raquia probably = solid dome), but rather over
Moses' **intention** in referring to ANE cosmology. Moses was a learned man,
but he was writing for the masses, who were uneducated, illiterate, former
slaves. He had to write in terms they could understand. I don't think Moses or
the other intelligentsia of his day really believed that rain came from
doorways in a solid raquia, regardless what the masses believed. That concept and
all the associated mythology had been developed in the dark, impenetrable
passageways of time many, many millenia before civilization began in Mesopotamia.
Civilization and the invention of writing were a revolution for mankind,
because (for one thing) it created a large class of scholar-priests who had the
time and opportunity to work on cosmology together. Everyone around them in
Mesopotamia no doubt believed ANE cosmology at the time the Atrahasis epic was
imprinted in clay (for example). But how long did the scholars in that society
continue to believe every aspect of it? I'm suggesting a situation that is
parallel to what we see today, where the scholars in America have (by and large)
a different view of cosmology than the common man in America. A quick scan of
history will remind us that it has always been thus for as far back as we can
see: scholars have always had a view different than the common man. What
makes us think it was any different in Mesopotamia, where civilization was
newest and had the first opportunity to work over the oldest and most
long-established myths? This process of discovery about the falsity of ANE cosmology must
have been going on for millenia by the time Moses came on the scene. Do you
really think he was as ignorant as the masses, and that he consumed Gilgamesh
and the Atrahasis epic the same way an uneducated mesopotamian or Egyptian
fieldworker would?

The passage about rain in Genesis 2 really seems to show that Moses knew
better. Certainly he adopted (or allowed) the ANE sort of language when he
redacted the flood account. But I don't see enough evidence to assert that he
**must** have believed ANE cosmology himself, and that God could be charged with
propagating falsehoods by telling Moses things that weren't scientifically true.
 I think Moses was practicing accomodation to his audience (not God
practicing accomodating to Moses), and that Moses accomodated them in a way that used
the common language and cosmology of the ANE as the framework to communicate
some specific ideas, but did so in a way that did **not** teach concepts that
are false. He says in effect (in Gen.1 Day 2), "so regarding the waters above
the raquia that you believe in, I tell you that God put them there. He did it
as part of a well-planned process of bringing the world from formlessness to
having form. He did it transcendently." His listeners **rightly** knew that
there really are waters that come down from the sky, and therefore they needed
to know Who put them there. In accomodating his listeners by using the word
"raquia" and addressing their concept of waters above it, Moses is in no way
asserting that it is an ocean above a solid dome. Instead, he is only
addressing something the Jews knew to be true (that water comes down) and he is telling
them that it was God (not Baal or Tiamet or any other pagan deity) who was
responsible for it.

I think this distinction between the accomodation discussed on this list
versus Mosaic accomodation of his listeners is not insignificant.

Best regards,
Phil Metzger

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Jun 18 17:14:52 2006