From: platt@watson.ibm.com (Daniel E. Platt)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Unfounded Biblical Faith
Date: 14 Apr 92 21:35:59 GMT
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM

In article <1992Apr14.195318.2532@athena.cs.uga.edu>, hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes:
|> In article <srqjlpn.rohwerwd@netcom.com> rohwerwd@netcom.com (W. David Rohwer)
|> writes:
|> >     As you should know by now, the Bible contains many contradictions
|> >and errors and as a consequence does not stand up to logic.  
|> >
|> >     Ok, I will list two.
|> >     Number 1:  The two creation stories in Genesis.
|> 
|> How do these two passages contradict one another.  The passage that says
|> that God created the animals out of the ground in chapter two could also
|> be translated "God had created."  It is in some versions.  Hebrew verbs 
|> can tend to be unspecific, and need to be understood in context, from 
|> what I have read.  I know this can be true of Arabic, another related 
|> language.

You don't have to compare the Priestly source (Gen 1) to the J source (Gen 2)
to find problems.  Within the priestly source:

	God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form,
and void, and darkness lay upon the face of the deep, and the spirit (or
breath) of God moved across the waters,

and God said, "Let there be light."  And there was light...

	God created a firmament in the midst of the waters, separating the
waters from the waters, and called the firmament heaven...

(created twice?)

It wasn't until a few days later that God put lights in the sky to rule the
day and the night and to mark the seasons... that is to GIVE the light -- even
though days had been passing for some time by then. 

This source does not refer to Eden, it does not refer to Adam, the sequence of
the creation of animals was different.

It looks very much like a commentary on a Babylonian creation myth involving
Tiamat (even the word 'deep' has a strong similarity to this), with the days
corresponding to the generations of the Babylonian gods.



Then, you can move into the J source (Gen 2) -- the way the animals were
created was different; the order of the creation of the animals was different.
The treatment of Man vs. Woman was different than the was it was handled in
the animals.

In Gen 1, God is all encompassing -- came before all things, created all
things with his breath.  In Gen 2, God walks in the garden much the way a man 
would.  The theology of the two accounts seems to be different.  The intent is
different as well.


Gen 1 is pretty much the only P contribution in pre-Noah stories (the comment
of picking 'clean' animals in different numbers than other animals for
entry onto the ark has been attributed to P).


Moving right along -- it seems that what happens if someone SEES God changed
over time.  On the one hand, there's Adam and Eve seeing God all the time. 
Yet, Moses cannot see God's face or he would die.  Yet Abraham saw God, walked
and talked with him, went to a hill overlooking Sodom and Gomorah and had a
long argument with God.  But Moses sees God in a burning bush, and sees God's
back on Mt. Sinai...  Yet, 70 people go up with Moses and eat on Mt. Sinai
with God at the table.  There's lots of confusion about how those traditions
were redacted together.

Then again, right after Moses had his commission, God decided to send his
angel of death after Moses with no warning or account... Moses' wife saved him.



In any case, I feel that this material was written by people trying to express
their discovery about the nature of God.  As time moved on, people used and
re-used the stories to make different points about their relationship with
God.  When they discussed cosmology, it was the best they knew at the time --
I don't see how we should be limited to ancient Babylonian cosmology when
we're really trying to understand God and what people were saying about the
relationship of God to the universe.


Dan
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc