The Aggadah of Genesis: In Conflict With Science?

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PaulK: For instance, in Genesis 1 birds and sea life are created on the 5th day. The insects and the crocodile and the mammals are created on the 6th day. And of course, this is against the scientific account, where insects and many land animals appear before birds.

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Stop reading the King James Bible! Pick up the Masoretic Text and read Genesis in Hebrew!!The Fifth Eon of Genesis...."Let the waters bring forth abundantly the sheretz nefesh chayah" - Gen. 1:20a.The Hebrew word sheretz can allude to any swarming aquatic creature or an insect or a reptile or an animal or a quadruped.The Hebrew word nefesh means a soul (i.e., the pysche; the mind), but it's also used of any creature, because each creature has a mind even if they don't use it as much as they should.The Hebrew word for "life" appears here in the feminine form (chayah), which MIGHT be alluding to life that procreates via asexual reproduction and/or sexual reproduction wherein the female brings forth life.Either way, the important thing here is to note that the waters are bringing forth this abundance of life, which is exactly where science says life began."Let the waters bring forth abundantly ... winged creatures winging (oph y'ofayph) over the earth on the face of the heavens" - Gen. 1:20b.The Hebrew word oph can mean any winged thing from an insect to a bird to a bat to a plane (in modern Hebrew). All we're talking about here is a "flying creature." Again, these too can trace their origins back to the waters, per science.IF, I - or anyone else - wanted to project this so-called "cretive day" onto the geological ages, which would be allowed per the aggadhic approach, then ... one could say that this Fifth Eon would probably include the later Precambrian Period right on through to the Carboniferous Period."And ELOHIM (lit. POWERS) formed (bara) the great crocodiles (ha-taninim ha-gadolim)" - Gen. 1:21a.Thus begins the Permian Period and the appearance of the Terrible Lizards (i.e., dinosaurs), etc."And ELOHIM (lit. POWERS) formed (bara) ... all living creatures that creep, which swarmed the waters according to its kind, and every winged winger (lit. winged creature with a wing tip) according to its kind" - Gen. 1:21b.This takes us from the Permian Period through the Triassic Period, the Jurassic Period and right on into the Cretaceous Period."And ELOHIM (lit. POWERS) blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the winged multiply in the earth" - Gen 1:22.And thus ends the Fifth Eon with its dark beginning and bright ending. Okay, let me have your next bitch, gripe and complaint. :sigh:

I see you apply your "aggadah" (creative misreading) to my posts too. I didn't directly comment on your intentions, I commented that your actions were inconsistent with your claimed intentions. That requires no psychic powers.

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Been through this too many times on too many different forums.

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Just a few words of advice, smadewell.You have just joined this forum. Please don't carry your frustrations from other boards to this one. Leave the old baggage behind.Respect your participants by answering their questions as calmly and patiently as if you had heard them for the first time.You might find a new spark to work with and you also may learn something new.Please direct any comments concerning this Admin msg to the Moderation Thread.
Any response in this thread will receive a 24 hour timeout.Carry on...

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Stop reading the King James Bible! Pick up the Masoretic Text and read Genesis in Hebrew!!

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I didn't read the KJV. I don't claim to be able to read Hebrew. But reading any trnaslation is better than NOT reading the text as you do.In your little story you explicitly referenced birds as part of the order of creation. Now as you know the Hebrew text does have birds created on the 5th day - just as I said. Because that is where the word referring to birds actually appears. Now you can say that it doesn't refer to birds but something else, but that leaves birds out of the order of creation altogether - even though you explicitly mentioned them. So we still have the fact that your story doesn't fit the Genesis order.Indeed the whole strategy of generalisation is a failure. By arguing that it means many things you are stuck with either assuming that it means all of them or that it means only an arbitrary subset selected by yourself. If you choose the first then the problem reappears - birds are far later than insects and they evolved from terrestrial life that Genesis places after birds. But if you choose the latter - which is problematic in itself - then you need to explain where the rest appear. If you leave birds out of the 5th day you need to put them in the 6th - but there's nothing that puts the birds as appearing in the 6th.But if it was intneded to give the "correct" order, as your story was, why does the story not explicitly put birds in the 6th day where they "belong" ? It's not that the Hebrew language is incapable of distinguishing birds from flying insects. I suggest that the answer is that the Genesis 1 story is not about the actual order in which things did appear on Earth.

We can play this broken record routine all day long, PaulK."The text can say this-and-that."
"No, it doesn't!"
"The word can mean such-and-such."
"No, it can't!"Since you don't speak Hebrew and apparently didn't bother to look these words up and thereby double-check my assertion, which you don't want to accept anyway, here's a link for those who'd like to see the text in question in Hebrew and in English: Gen. 1:20.Here's a link to (an non-exhaustive online) Lexicon on the words sheretz and oph.A sheretz can allude to any aquatic creature that swarms and by extention an insect or an animal that "swarms or teems."An oph can allude to any winged creature from a insect to a bird to a reptile to a bat. If it's got wings, then it's an oph. In modern Hebrew an oph is used to describe airplanes, because they have wings.Don't agrue with me. Take it up with Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius and Jastrow.

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PaulK: But if it was intneded to give the "correct" order, as your story was, why does the story not explicitly put birds in the 6th day where they "belong" ?

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I don't know. Maybe because birds evolved from reptiles and aquatic life, insects, reptiles and the large crocs (i.e., terrible lizards) are all that's being talked about in this Fifth Eon?Dude, I'm just saying that the text can be projected onto the geological ages not that it has to be or should be projected onto them.As stated, the punchline of this aggadhic cosmological tale isn't about proving or disproving Creationism or Evolution! The moral of the story, as stated, is that one can give meaning to life. How? By advancing it, by studying it and by reverencing it.Why are getting so bent out of shape about an aggadhic tale? Does the moral of this story offend you that much? Me thinks you protest too much.Edited by smadewell, : No reason given.

I am not disputing that the Hebrew words may have multiple meanings - and if you are syggesting that I should then you are being silly. Thus my argument is not with Brown, Driver, Briggs etceteraWhat I am disputing is the validity of your "reading". I say that you cannot validly read a text by plucking words out of context and choosing the meaning that happens to suit you. And that is exactly what you are doing.So please deal with my actual points instead of misrepresenting them and introducing red herrings.

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As stated, the punchline of this aggadhic cosmological tale isn't about proving or disproving Creationism or Evolution! The moral of the story, as stated, is that one can give meaning to life. How? By advancing it, by studying it and by reverencing it.

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So there's really no need to grossly twist and distort the story just to force-fit it to scientific accounts, like you were doing. SO the question is wh do you insist on it and get all upset when I point out just how unreasonable you are being ?

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Why are getting so bent out of shape about an aggadhic tale?
Does the moral of this story offend you that much? Me thinks you protest too much.

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But I haven't commented on your supposed moral. Instead I've been commenting on the validty of your attemptes to force-fit the text to modern scientific views of what happened. And you get all bent out of shape about that - even though it is completely unnecessary to the supposed moral. So unless you are claiming to be psychic, you simply have no grounds to suggest that I even care about your "moral".

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What I am disputing is the validity of your "reading". I say that you cannot validly read a text by plucking words out of context and choosing the meaning that happens to suit you. And that is exactly what you are doing.

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You're right! And I'm saying that there's a rabbinic precedent for doing just that. You can dispute my reading all you want, because it's just that ... my reading. Likewise, I can dispute that the KJV translation for oph and state that it doesn't have to mean "bird," but can be any "winged creature". Dude, look at the link if don't believe me. There's nothing in the context that demands that oph be interpreted as "bird" or "winged incest." All the word and context would force is that oph is alluding to "winged creatures."Edited by smadewell, : No reason given.

Well I am glad that you give me permission to dispute your appalling "reading" of the text. I am not ocnvinced that there really is Rabbinic authority for your methodology - and if there is, too bad for the Rabbis.But I would say that there is context which suggests that it is correctly read as at least including birds. Your own little story, by recognised that leaving birds out creates a big hole. But there is no other place in the story where there is even an equally clear reference to birds. And it would be easy to include a more specific reference to birds if that were desired.And that is only one single example where you are forced to take a strained reading. So why insist on it when your supposed moral does not require that the story fits with modern scientific accounts ?
Why not simply say that the literal truth of the story is not an important issue ?

The arguments between evolutionists and creationists are silly, IMO. Why? Because the text is just an aggadhic story. It can be used to argue in vain for ... or ... it can be used to argue in vain against either POV. The text is flexible, because the words used have multiple meanings that can be applied to the story. Therefore, one need not be a slave to the KJV (or other) English translations. Further, this is an aggadhic tale with a moral to the story and it's not a scientific textbook. Concordism or non-concordism. It flat doesn't matter. The moral is advance life, study life and reverence life. End of story.... You want to keep debating, then go right on ahead, but it wouldn't change the message in the story.

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Concordism or non-concordism. It flat doesn't matter.

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You've changed your tune. If it flat doesn't matter then why spend most of the thread arguing about it, almost run away because people didn't agree with your concordism and still get upset over disagreements even when you came back ? Why not just start by arguing that the literal meaning isn't important, and explaining how you draw this "moral" of yours from it ?

A new young Rabbi arrived one day. He stepped to the center of the room and said "The story in Genesis 1 can be viewed as aggadhic. The older Rabbis said, "Yes we know that."The young Rabbi said, "But it can be seen to include dark matter.""Yes", the older Rabbis replied, "but that would be stretching things.""You don't see it", the young Rabbi said, "where it says birds could mean anything with wings.""Yes", the older Rabbis said, "but that would be stretching things.""You just don't understand", the young Rabbi shouted."True", the older Rabbis said.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It's refreshing to see the original Hebrew discussed here and the exploration of what a familiar narrative can mean as well as what it is often taken to mean. This obviously took some time to research, type up and share.I'm hardly sharp enough on Hebrew to debate points, but I've enjoyed reading. We'd be living in a better world if every interpreter of a sacred text considered the matter of genre as seriously as smadewell does. An ancient narrative is not a scientific treatise, as s/he notes, nor a newspaper article. Literalists, by reading texts in just such an anachronistic way, betray not just an insufficient understanding of how science works, but of how literature works as well. It mistreats the very texts they want to revere.Many thanks.

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Archer

The problem is that smadwwll does not take the text seriously. Seriosuly reading an ancient text - or any text - is not a matter of taking words out of context and arguing over what that word on its own might mean.Really all smadwell presents is a very superficial view designed to give the impression of authority.