Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)

Bernie, Michael's point -- and Michael is no concordist, so far as I know!
-- is simply that "the ancient Jews mostly took it literal, because it was
the 'science of the day'" is way, way, way too broad a statement without
some detailed support. For example:

-- what contemporaneous Hebrew documents support the claim that Gen. 1-11
was the "science of the day?" Appealing only to the Biblical text here is
question-begging, because the literary genre of the Biblical text is the
issue.

-- related to the first point, what do the source documents of Gen. 1-11
suggest about its literary genre? Were they records of detailed and precise
empirical observations, or collections of folk tales and poetry, or any
variety of other things?

-- related to the first two points, in what contexts were the source
documents of Gen. 1-11 and the text itself used? Were there training
academies for professions similar to the modern sciences in which trainees
used these texts as primary sources?

-- related to all these points, what "day" are you talking about? The "day"
in which the (presumably) oral traditions were first being formed? The day
in which the (presumably) oral traditions were first written down? The day
in which the underlying writings were compiled into the several (Yahwist,
etc.) separate strands that probably make up the canonical text? The day in
which the Yahwist and other strands were redacted by later editors and
knitted into the canonical text? Already we have probably spanned many
hundreds, if not thousands, of years of writing and redaction by many
different writers and editors in various cultural settings: early nomadic,
captive in Egypt, loosely organized and wandering, infiltrating Canaan,
under various prophets, Judges, and Kings, and captive in Babylon. Would
you suggest that a nomadic shepherd in Joseph's time would necessarily have
understood Gen. 1-11 exactly the same as someone in the scribal class during
the Babylonian captivity?

An extraordinary amount of scholarship would be required to support any firm
conclusion on any of these points. Our knowledge of the ancient Hebrews is
significant, but in many ways limited and highly contested (many, probably
most, mainstream archeologists are "minimalists" and don't really think of
the "ancient Hebrews" as significant at all -- most would likely almost
entirely dismiss the Biblical stories of the Kings and Judges). In fact, we
don't have any of the source documents that underlie Gen. 1-11. They are
apparently lost to history.

So Michael's point is very well taken, I think -- who can say with any final
certainty how the earliest hearers of these texts understood them?

What we can do is think by analogy to surrounding Mesopotamian cultures. As
I've said before, I think "science of the day" is an anachronistic misnomer
for something like the Enuma Elish in that context. Read John Walton's book
on the ANE understanding for some really interesting context. Yes, they
understood the Enuma Elish and other such stories to be "real" -- but "real"
for them did not carry the same common-sense physical meaning that it
carries for us -- they had a much more functional, rather than physical,
view of the cosmos.

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:24 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>wrote:

> Hi Michael-
>
> Are you suggesting that it was possible for reasonable people at the time
> of Moses to think that the Earth was shaped as a ball (not flat)? Why would
> they think such a thing, as it goes against common sense? We know better
> because of technology.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Roberts [mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk]
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 3:12 PM
> To: Dehler, Bernie; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
> I dont think we really know what people at the time of Moses thought. If
> David Fouts is right (OT prof at Bryan) as he argued in an article in the
> Journal of the Evangelical Theolo Society in about 1999 on exaggeration of
> numbers in the OT, both of ages and census. He claimed this was common
> practice and why the OT writers did this. It is accommodation worthy of
> Seely! (and me!) The logic of his position is of course to do the same to
> the 6 days.....
>
> My impression is that people of OT times were more open than we might
> think,
> but there is no research
>
> Michael
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:46 PM
> Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
>
> The point is that the church fathers already started down a path of not
> taking the Bible literally, unlike those at the time of Moses. Science was
> awakening.
>
> YEC's don't accept a flat earth- but surprisingly, some still go for a
> firmament. They think there's a canopy of frozen water out there in space
> beyond the planets and stars that we see.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
> Behalf Of gordon brown
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 1:24 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
> Bernie,
>
> When I try to think of ways in which the science of the early church
> fathers differed from that of the writers of the Old Testament, the shape
> of the earth is the first thing that comes to my mind. The church fathers
> should have known that it was spherical, and we assume that the OT writers
> accepted a flat earth, which is consistent with their phraseology. However
> that was not a factor in the questions that some fathers raised concerning
> solar days in Genesis 1 and the Flood being global. Do you know of any YEC
> teachings that are due to taking flat earth phraseology literally?
>
> Gordon Brown (ASA member)
>
>
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>
> > The church fathers had a degree of science. For example, they probably
> > knew the Earth wasn't flat, unlike the person who wrote Genesis and the
> > original audience for Genesis?
> >
> > ...Bernie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
> > Behalf Of gordon brown
> > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 6:23 PM
> > To: asa@calvin.edu
> > Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
> >
> > On Fri, 15 Aug 2008, Dehler, Bernie wrote:
> >
> >> What do the church fathers have to do with it? My point is that Genesis
> >> was written by an ancient Jew, and the ancient Jews mostly took it
> >> literal because it was the "science of the day." Most modern thinkers
> >> don't take it literally now. Obviously there's a grey zone of
> transition
> >> between the ancients and the modern. The church fathers are in a
> >> transition point, I think.
> >>
> >> ...Bernie
> >>
> >
> > Bernie,
> >
> > The point is that the church fathers were not influenced by modern
> > science. When they asked how there could be a solar day with no sun or
> > noted that wind does not lower sea level, the science they were using was
> > exactly the same as was known to the author of Genesis.
> >
> > When YECs claim that interpretations contrary to theirs occurred only
> > after the rise of modern science, they are simply making assumptions
> > without doing the research. That also applies to others who don't
> question
> > this YEC claim.
> >
> > Gordon Brown (ASA member)
> >
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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> >
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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> >
>
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-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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