Genesis 1 and 2: The Difference Between Created and Formed

i must have missed that question. no, the verbs are masculine. the shekinah is feminine.but again, my beliefs are irrelevant. really, they are. this is not about my belief. this is about what the text says. lol nice phraseology. but no, it is not logical, nor is it relevant. we're not talking about interpretation or belief. one does not even need to believe in the bible to read it and understand what it says. i have found quite often that belief just gets in the way -- and makes you create crazy ideas like this one you keep talking about as a way to justify actually believing in the bible.we are not discussing what i believe, or how i interpret genesis. we are discussing how what you believe does not fit what the text says. this is not a battle of my religion against your religion, this is a battle of the text of the bible against your idea. as i mentioned, something similar to this idea is a rather common interpretation, and i think it's probably an acceptable one. though i do not think it is usually related in terms of god's female presence, the shekinah.

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yes, it is.does the meal exist before it is made?added by edit: the problem is that you are misapplying words found within idioms literally to other verses that do not contain the idioms. the base meaning of asah is "do." "make" is actually somewhat idiomatic, as well, it's just a common meaning.so for instance, regarding a meal, one "does" the meal. similarly, one "does" their hair, or "does" their nails (funny that these are both in english as well). so, literally:

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Genesis 18:7:

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v'ben-ha-baqar asher asah

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and-son-the-cow that (he)did

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Judges 13:15

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v'ne-asah l'paniq gedi ezim

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and-may-do to-before(you) kid-goats

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Deuteronomy 20:12

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v'asetah et-tsefareniah

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and-did (d.o.)-nails(her)

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2 Samuel 19:25

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v'lo-asah regelio, v'lo-asah sefamo

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and-not-did feet(his), and-not-did beard(his)

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it's not a dictionary. it's a list of usages. it tells you nothing of the grammar, the context, the idioms, or even WHY something is used that way. in english, we can say "she did her nails" and it means "got a manicure" or perhaps "painted her nails." but we cannot exchange "got" or "paint" for every usage of "do," can we?Edited by arachnophilia, : added edit

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so how do we tell who's heart was with god, and who's was not? oh, yes, the bible tells us. which means paul's heart was, because he said it was. i see.

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i see. so the bible IS your god then?

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you are making up a false dilemma. i have no claimed that god created the sun, moon, and stars "out of nothing." this is a phrase you have added to my claim, making it a strawman. in fact, i specifically made claims to the contrary. no. in this context, it still means "make." you have not demonstrated a sufficient reason to that "doing" the sun, and "doing" the moon, and "doing" the stars should mean anything other than "make," in the context of creation.i understand that you do not believe genesis 1 is about creation. you have not demonstrated that, either. and to do so would require that we rob genesis 1 of most of its meaning.

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you are contending that the bible speaks in error, and in ignorance. yes, that is what the text says. initial creation. there is not.

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asah yarech l'moadim

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made moon/month to-appointed-time.

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...made a moon for months

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yes, god made the moon as a marker for time. oh, and while we're at it, the other half of the verse:

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shemesh yada m'boao

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sun knows introduction(his)

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...a sun knows his introduction

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tell me, does the sun have a brain? i think you are misunderstanding anthropomorphizisation in poetry. the moon did not exist prior to day four, when god made it. no, but it takes away from the point and meaning of genesis a story that contains the origins of the heavenly bodies. why bother mentioning them at all, if it's not talking about their creation?Edited by arachnophilia, : subtitle, broken tag

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uh huh. tell me another one. you're saying that the author of genesis saw a vision (a story you've made up) in which he was unaware of the sun's existance, and then wrote "god made the sun" when god really just revealed the sun. you're saying he got it wrong out of ignorance. that is not the same as getting it right. have you no common sense? you did not hear me right. you did not hear anything, actually.you asked if we can know that god made the sun on day four. i said "yes" and "that is what the text says." contrary to your point. yes. we can know that it means god made the sun on the fourth day, because IT SAYS god made the sun on the fourth day.read my post, and genesis 1 a few more times. maybe it'll make sense.

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there are two acceptable readings. one is that land is created (formless and void) in verse 1, but it is buried under water. the second is that land already existed (formless and void) prior to creation, buried under water.have your pick -- neither indicates a prior creation that was destroyed.

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you gave me a lot of out-of-context verses, misapplication of scripture, mistranslations, and intentional manglings of not only hebrew grammar, but logic as well.i do not think those are sufficient. because you take those references entirely out of context. for instance, you took a reference to the potential might of god, given by job (which even by most religious interpretation is a fictional allegory), interpretted it as something that had to have happened in the past, and misapplied it to genesis 1 where it did not fit.that's not "taking the bible as a whole." that's proof-texting: taking little bits you think support your point far out of their original context, distorting their meaning, and using them as justification for an already existing idea.take genesis 1 as a whole. it describes the creation of heaven and earth -- and it TELLS you so. take genesis as a whole. it describes the origins of how things came to be, both specific to the hebrew people, and somewhat universally as well. take the torah as a whole. it describes the traditional history of the judaism, the origin of their faith, and several major events that shaped their culture. take the tanakh as a whole -- it's a collection of the (mostly) religious writing for about 1,000 years of judaism.no, you can't just use any bit you please any way you please and disregard the intent and meaning of that text as a whole.Edited by arachnophilia, : subtitle

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just one. what it says in the text.compare the text of gen 1:9 to gen 1:14

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Genesis 1:9

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v'heraeh ha-yabashah

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"and show dry land"

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Genesis 1:14

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yehey ma'orot

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"exist, luminaries"

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the text of genesis 1:14 is literally god commanding the lights in the heavens to be. he's telling them to come into existance. so no, there is no way to read the text with them existing before this point.the dry land, on the other hand, has to previously exist. it is just being revealed (and dried out). i said that there are two acceptable ways of interpretting when land is created -- because it doesn't specifically say, like it does for many other things. you can interpret it to mean that the land (and water, btw) existed prior to god's actions, and was simply the null, blank state of the universe. or you can read it to mean that god created these at the beginning.you might also read the division of waters under the heavens as the gathering of land, similar to god dividing light and dark, waters above from waters below, etc. the land may not have existed until this point, and simply collected upon the division. i'm not sure how valid this argument, but it seems weeker than the others. verses 1-5 are general praises of god. but THIS language should sound very familiar:

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Gen 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

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Gen 8:3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

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Gen 8:5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth [month], on the first [day] of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

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Gen 9:15 And I will remember my covenant, which [is] between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

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wrong chapter of genesis.

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Gen 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

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Gen 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.

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yes. what's your point? no, no, no. i've explained this to you a dozen times already. i really don't want to go over it again. it's simply another example of you reading whatever you please into the text, while disregarding its purpose and intent and meaning. no. yes, some 6 chapters later. really, have you read the rest of genesis? you're really struggling with this, aren't you? there was, in fact, a previous system of things before god covered the earth with the deep, in an act of divine judgement:

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Gen 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

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yes, in fact, the flood did -- because it was un-creation. *sigh* more lectures from people who don't know basic hebrew?"tohu" is right. but "and" is pronounced "va" and the other word is pronounced "bohu" with a hard "b" sound. bet's sound like b's at the beginning of words. are you really gonna listen to someone speak about hebrew idioms when they can't read hebrew? regardless of your concordance and its dictionary probably say, the two are actually very nearly synonymous. the "assonance" is frankly mostly irrelevent. standard hebrew grammar results in a high degree of assonance of a regular basis. "-im"s and "-ot"s tend to appear on nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs. it's a standard hebrew stylistic point -- and the appearance of a phrase with a higher degree of assonance generally just means the author wanted something more poetic, especially if the phrase is nearly synonymous, because this reinforces the idea parallelism.

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yes, i subjectively believe that authors of the bible meant what they wrote. of course you do. but ringo already addressed this point in a very witty manner, so i'll leave it that. (at what point in the club do i get my secret decoder ring?) you realize of course that daniel was not in the bible before it was written. daniel preached the apocalypse -- and many, many prophets preached that god was punishing or was going to punish israel for her infidelity. the wicked reconcile it in their heart, saying "that doesn't apply to me..." when really it did.daniel is speaking, essentially, about twisting the words of the prophets -- but his statement is almost tautological. the people who understand will change, and those who do not will not.

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then the bible is useless for evangelism. look, this is stupid. the issue at hand is that you are making stuff up, and trying to change the meaning of words in the book of genesis. that is not the wisdom of god -- it's not even treating the bible as some kind of secret code book. it's just plain bs. it's ad-hoc, and an overactive imagination. just stick to the words on the page.and genesis is NOT a book of the prophets. it's a book of the law.

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i started posting in this thread with some information from the footnotes of my chumash. i'm aware that there are many different rabbinical traditions regarding a great many things. and yes, the gap idea is one of them -- and one that i feel is unfounded. and it's a rather late one, too.but that's not what this thread is about.

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evidently, he didn't, and that much is obvious to anyone who actually knows basic hebrew. would you listen to anyone's argument about shakespeare is they quoted "toby or toby, that isthe quest shun" ? or would you laugh them off as a poor analyst of english? give me time. if the evidence is that he does not know hebrew, then yes, his translation is suspect.

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