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

Archer is an excellent commentator to cite when you want things to come
out eisegetically. He will do anything to make scripture inerrant.
Unfortunately, even he has not figured out how to make hares and hyrax
chew their cud.
Dave (ASA)

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 07:35:23 -0500 "Dick Fischer"
<dickfischer@verizon.net> writes:
Hi Dave:
As I am sure you know the Hebrew language has certain limitations such as
no verb tense, certain words do double duty such as earth/land,
mountains/hills, heaven/sky, birds/insects, etc. Then they had peculiar
manners of speech we don’t use today. Add to that scribal glitches and
translational difficulties and it is a wonder to me any of it makes sense
at all. On this issue I’ll defer to Gleason Archer who is a far better
authority than I am.
“Verse 16 should not be understood as indicating the creation of the
heavenly bodies for the first time on the fourth creative day; rather it
informs us that the sun, moon, and stars created on Day One as the source
of light had been placed in their appointed places by God with a view to
their eventually functioning as indicators of time (‘signs, seasons,
days, years’) to terrestrial observers. The Hebrew verb ‘wayya ‘as’ in
v. 16 should better be rendered ‘Now [God] had made the two great
luminaries, etc.,’ rather than as simple past tense, [God] made.”
You simply cannot expect the OT Hebrew to meet the same standards as you
can apply to NT Greek. But if you insist on putting “create” in the text
then use the past perfect tense which the writer couldn’t have done even
if he had intended it. Or assume the writer had no clue what he was
writing about as you seem to imply.
Dick Fischer
Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of D. F. Siemens, Jr.
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 10:53 PM
To: dickfischer@verizon.net
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] The Hebrew for the Making of Man

I know, add qualifications until the text says what you want it to say.
The pattern of the fourth day is like the pattern of the fifth day, with
the exception that the heavenly bodies were made and the sea creatures
and birds created. The sixth day has the terrestrial creatures made and
humans created. Are you going to argue that the terrestrial creatures
"were made to function for a purpose"? Also, the light, the firmament,
the seas, the dry land, could be understood as "made to function for a
purpose." But they were not declared made.
Dave (ASA)

On Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:25:33 -0500 "Dick Fischer"
<dickfischer@verizon.net> writes:
Hi Dave,

I think given the limits of the Hebrew language they used that it isn’t
too big a stretch to see the word asah, translated “made,” as more along
the lines of “made to function for a purpose.” I could be guilty of
putting words in the mouths of the authors because I know what works and
what doesn’t, but I doubt the writer had believed the sun wasn’t created
until after vegetation was already growing. It wouldn’t make any sense
to him just as it makes no sense to us. They surely had some perception
that the sun was beneficial to plants. And had he believed that God
actually created the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day why didn’t he
use the word bara to express that? The word, asah doesn’t have that
meaning.

Dick Fischer
Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org

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Received on Sun Feb 3 16:21:16 2008