Re: [asa] The Hebrew for the Making of Man

John H. Walton, _The NIV Application Commentary, Genesis_, notes that
Shamash was the Babylonian name for the sun god (p. 123). He also notes
that the passage is, like others, "passively polemical." The Hebrew word
for "sun" is _shmsh_, which, with the pointing, is identical to the
Babylonian term. Additionally, it appears that the names as deities and
as luminaries were identical in ANE. The entry for _helios_ in my little
Liddell and Scott seems to indicate that ancient Greek usage was similar,
with the word applying both to the sun and to the sun god. Only later was
Apollo or Phoebus recognized as the deity. I don't get any indication
that the Greeks originally used Aphrodite and Ares as names for the
planets, as was the case with the Roman Venus and Mars.

Countering your argument in the second paragraph, Walton notes that using
the names could be understood as the creation of deities. You are
ignoring the ancients' belief that deities came into being. The
distinction you want between created things as just stuff and deities as
originators is not ancient. Their statues and groves were deities. The
ancient outlook does not coincide with contemporary approaches. If you
are determined to attack the favorite arguments of Day Agers or YEC, you
will not find it in every jot and tittle. If the language of day 4 was
intended as an apology against ANE idolatry, it won't help as an argument
against contemporary views. However, the use of ANE "science" will
counter the attempt to fit the passage to these current eisegetic
versions. Additionally, countering the switch from past tense to
pluperfect is relevant against OEC and day-age claims.
Dave (ASA)

On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:40:53 -0500 philtill@aol.com writes:
The Sabaeans lived in Yemen and so we wouldn't expect them to have a
great influence on the Hebrews -- not hardly a cause for Moses to change
his vocabulary, especially since you said the Sabaeans used a "related
term" for their goddess and not even the same word that the Hebrews used
for "sun". That's like saying that we can't use the word "real" because
a tribe in Peru uses the related word "royal" as the name of a god.

Even if some Hebrews were worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, these
words are still the ordinary Hebrew words for the objects and not proper
names of deities. So Moses would have no cause to stop using the
ordinary words. In fact, if Moses' vocabulary in Genesis 1 was chosen
with false worship in mind, then it would make more sense for him to use
the ordinary term since then he would be proving that those worshipped
things were just created objects and not gods.

If people were worshipping pine trees, then would Moses stop using the
word "pine trees" and change to "needly plants with tall trunks" just to
avoid using the ordinary words? No, that makes no sense!

This has got to be one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard. So why?
 Does the fact that Moses was dealing with phenomena, not objects,
undercut a favorite argument against Day Agers or YEC's? If so, that's
not a good reason to use bad arguments.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
To: philtill@aol.com
Cc: d.nield@auckland.ac.nz; dopderbeck@gmail.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 5:03 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] The Hebrew for the Making of Man

The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon, p. 1039,
lists the root for the sun and the languages where it is found. Then it
says that a related term in Sabean is a goddess. It later notes, under
the Hebrew term, references to worship of the sun, moon and stars in II
Kings 23:5; Jeremiah 8:2; Ezra 8:16; Deuteronomy 4:19.
Dave (ASA)

On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:07:29 -0500 philtill@aol.com writes:
Do you have specific etymologies in mind for names of pagan sun and moon
gods in the surrounding countries, and how they relate to the Hebrew
words for sun and moon?

Without that it is not a viable theory because Moses was willing to talk
about all the other things mistaken for divinities in Genesis 1. He
discussed sea monsters, which were divinities, the ocean, which was a
divinity, the sky, which was a divinity, the animals, which were
divinities, the land, which was a divinity, etc. Why did he only avoid
the Hebrew word for sun and moon but not all the others? In fact, the
sea and sky were the main two divinities in the Sumerian mythology. I
know less about Egyptian mythology, but I know at least that the sea was
a god in the Egyptian pantheon.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: d.nield@auckland.ac.nz
To: philtill@aol.com
Cc: dfsiemensjr@juno.com; dopderbeck@gmail.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 4:13 am
Subject: Re: [asa] The Hebrew for the Making of Man

Phil wrote:
Moses was clearly using ANE ideas, but
> his intentional choice to avoid the Hebrew words for "sun" and "moon"
> imply some sophistication that exceeded the origins of ANE mythology
from
> several millenia earlier.
>
I now point out that a much simpler explanation is that the writer of
Genesis was merely avoiding the usual words for Sun and Moon because the
Sun and Moon were associated with divinities in the countries
neighbouring
Israel.
Don

More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail!

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Feb 1 23:03:21 2008