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

A flat something or other seems to be a reasonable view given the account
found in Day 2, which comes prior to the formation of the Earth (Day 3).
It states that the firmament was between waters above and waters below. If
we respect the view that there was no spherical object to work with (given
the earth was possibly still "without form and void"), then only something
relatively flat would make sense. Interestingly, protostellar accretion
disks are indeed flat, and they can appear as "waters". Also, we are told
by God what this firmament was called: "Heaven". I think the subsequent
use of the term "firmament" beginning in verse 14 applies to the more common
use of the term partially because our observer is now, apparently, standing
in his normal reference frame - Earth (now fully formed due to the
observation given on the day before).

Ted said: My recollection (which I haven't checked before writing this) is
that Aristotle argued for the earth's sphericity based on the following
types of

evidence:

--the set of visible constellations changes a bit as you go north or south
(which Greek traders did) --the shadow of the earth, during an eclipse of
the moon, is round (recall that Aristarchus later used this fact as part of
his calculation of the distances to the sun & moon) --ships vanish over the
horizon and return --the horizon from mountaintops is extended further out

Smart guys, those Greeks.

I might add that Aristotle argued for sphericity based on his view that
earthy objects were attracted to one another and, so , he rightly reasoned
that their mutual attraction would only form a sphere.

As for the idea that they missed the dome argument, I must say that I think
the idea was simply over their heads. [sorry, I couldn't resist] It is
indeed amazing how much those Greeks did figure out, but is also surprising
how much they missed. Galileo, IMO, was quickly disenchanted with Aristotle
when in his youth he noticed Aristotle's idea regarding heavier objects
falling faster than lighter ones did not hold-up to the simple observation
that large hail and small hail landed on the ground at the same time.
Galileo had tremendous resistance against his much more accurate and
demonstrable view even after his demonstrations. Such was the
Aristotle/Ptolemy/Aquinas entrenchment.

"Coope"

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Dehler, Bernie
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:38 AM
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)

The main point we were discussing was whether whoever wrote and originally
read Genesis thought the Earth was flat. I think it is obvious they did,
because of the "firmament" in there, and we both agree as to what a
firmament is, and it was part of the flat Earth idea. Therefore, the main
point I was making was that the original writers and readers of Gen. 1
thought the Earth was flat. Is that obvious or not? Seems to me that if we
agree that the main idea in their day was accepting of the firmament, the
flat Earth goes with that- it would have been foolish to think of the Earth
as a ball with a firmament, no?

As a side-note (another topic), if you use a definition for science as
"explaining how things work" then the cosmology of the ancients is their
ancient cosmological science.

.Bernie

  _____

From: David Opderbeck [mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 9:26 AM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)

I think it's presumptuous to think we can get into the mind of Moses with
such certainty. And of course, it's highly unlikely that Moses was the
original author or final redactor of the references to the firmament, so we
might well ask what difference it makes exactly what Moses had in his mind.
The very question of authorial intent is question begging.

Let's try this another way. Gen. 1 refers to the notion of a three-tiered
universe which has parallels in other ANE sources. Let's imagine the Moses
is the author of Gen. 1, and that he was indeed, as the text later suggests,
raised as an Egyptian prince before taking on leadership of the Hebrews. He
is schooled in the Egyptian cosmology and probably knows something of the
Mesopotamian creation myths.

The Egyptian and Mesopotamian cosmology is inseparable from the religions
that spawned it. There is no separation between "science" and "theology"
here. We'll set aside for a moment the impossible question of which of the
various Egyptian theologies Moses would have been schooled in (there were at
least four or five major competing Egyptian theologies with different
creation myths and varying cosmologies). Let's say Moses was schooled in
the Heliopolis Theology.

So, resonating with Gen. 1, under the Heliopolis Theology, Moses is schooled
in the notion that there is a primordial chaotic nothingness before the
world is created ("formless and void"). But there is a problem: the
primary God, Atum, does not himself exist before the chaos until, depending
on which version Moses accepts, Atum either projects himself into existence
or masturbates to produce the twins Shu and Tefnut, who become Atum's own
parents.

Now, if Moses' reference to the primordial chaos of the tohu and bohu in
Gen. 1 is the "science of the day," which Moses simply accepts, why should
we insist that his notion of God gets severed off from that "science" to
become something other than the masturbating Atum? Why not acknowledge that
Moses' notion of "god" also reflects the "science of the day," particularly,
say, in the use of the plural to reflect the "divine council?" In fact,
some people argue that the Biblical notion of God all the way through Christ
is just an appropriation of surrounding myths (e.g.:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Egypt/Heliopolis.html)

This is one reason why "science of the day" is an inappropriate anachronism.
It wasn't "science," it was theology. The Hebrews didn't just adopt those
myths, they reworked them theologically to present a very different God.
The text is not concerned with, and does not "teach," an ancient "science."
It adopts the familiar language of an ancient theology and transforms it to
present a new and unique theology. Perhaps Moses personally believed the
universe had three physical tiers, or perhaps not, but that is irrelevant to
the nature of the Biblical text -- IMHO.

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
wrote:

I think it is obvious from reading the text that Moses and the ancients
believed in a thing called a "firmament." I think it is clear what they
meant by that- a solid dome which separated the waters from above, and the
stars were hung in the firmament. This is all connected to a flat Earth. I
think we both know the ANE references for that. If you want to dispute
that, then better people to argue with would be those who propose it, like
Seely and Lamoureux. I'm going with those two guys because it seems
reasonable to me.

  _____

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:14 AM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa@calvin.edu

Subject: 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)
>
>
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-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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