Re: [asa] The moon rules...

John:

Most of what I know I've learned from my children.

More apropos to your comments, there are always mixtures of "literal" and
metaphorical content to language, Scripture being no exception.

I take it that there is intended only a literal moon and a literal sun.
It may be less clear that "night" and "day" are intended to be merely literal.
We use all these words, moon, sun, night, day, in a metaphorical sense.
(Juliet is the sun).

Clearly, there are great divisions regarding the degree with which "day" is
to be taken "literally" only in this Genesis account.

Without the literal sense of a word, there can be no metaphorical sense.
The task of the reader (and author) is to make clear when the sense is to
be taken as only literal, only metaphorical, or both.

It is the taking of the sense that is both literal and metaphorical that
is often the most profound and theological.
For it is when an event or a thing is taken as both literally and
metaphorically that the commonplace and ordinary are lifted into the
heavens, the finite united with the infinite.

An interesting example is found in CS Lewis' The Discarded Image, wherein
he describes the Medieval understanding of the union of the body and
the heavens. We have common, ordinary bodies, but in a sense that I
don't entirely remember they are united with the heavens. Bodies and
their parts point to the heavens.

Well, maybe I am remembering this badly, but still it is nonetheless
interesting this relationship between the metaphorical and literal.
Indeed, Lakoff & Johnson in their book "Metaphors we live by" search
for the literal part of our language. They argue that our language is
"embodied." That much of our language is a metaphor for primitive
bodily senses, like up and down.

All of this is only to remind us that metaphor is rich and cannot be
escaped in language.

Well, enough gibberish for now.

bill

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:54:28 -0500, "Jon Tandy" <tandyland@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Our five-year-old was asking my wife yesterday some deep questions. One of
> them was, "Why is the moon out at the same time as the sun?"
>
>
>
> Which led me to thinking. According to Genesis 1, the sun was made to
> rule
> the day, and the moon was made to rule the night. According to a
> literalist
> interpretation, what does this mean? If the sun ruling the day means that
> it is out in the daytime, then the moon must rule the night because it is
> out at night. Which leads back to the question - if the moon is supposed
> to
> rule at night, then why is it out in the daytime, and why is it often not
> out at nighttime? One of the functions of the lights in the firmament was
> to divide the day from the night, but that feature of the creation is
> apparently broken, with the moon's erratic behavior. Is God's creation
> not
> acting perfectly in accordance with His decree, or is this an evidence of
> creation's brokenness due to mankind's sinfulness? If the lights were to
> divide the light from the darkness, then why does the moon's presence
> actually make it light at nighttime?
>
>
>
> Or if this is a *general* statement, that the sun gives light during the
> day
> generally (except during solar eclipses) and the moon *generally* gives
> light at night (except at new moon, or when the moon isn't in the sky at
> night) -- then why can't the command for animals to reproduce "after their
> kind" be taken similarly as a *general* statement, meaning that normally
> hippos bring forth hippos, but in some rare cases hippos might become a
> different kind (e.g. aquatic mammals).
>
>
>
> Or, if the whole passage is taken as a literary account, and/or a typical
> Ancient Near East creation account, then what purpose does the part about
> the sun and moon play in the narrative? I know the section is said to be
> a
> polemic against or alternative to the pagan concept of heavenly deities
> being in control, but what does the part about the "ruling the day and
> night" have in the ancient cultural understanding? Collins and Blocher
> don't comment too much on this, except to suggest it has to do with
> seasons
> in the Hebrew liturgical calendar.
>
>
>
> "... then it becomes likely further that 'signs and appointed times' is a
> hendiadys meaning 'signs marking appointed (liturgical) times" (C. John
> Collins, Genesis 1-4, p. 47)
>
>
>
> (referring to Paul Beauchamp) "The luminaries will serve as signs for the
> religious festivals...among which figures the Sabbath. It is therefore
> the
> pivot on which the whole structure turns." (Henri Blocher, In the
> Beginning,
> p. 52)
>
>
>
> Obviously, concordists try to make the statements literal, scientific
> pronouncements, but it seems that a literary or ANE understanding would
> make
> more sense here.
>
>
>
> Jon Tandy

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Received on Wed Jul 1 08:31:36 2009