basic reading of genesis 1:1

question. if biblical hebrew is not english... why is it greek? if arguments from english translation aren't valid, why should arguments from greek translation be valid?i ask, fully aware that it's old. however, the DSS are approximately the same, and not a translation. as we have seen in this thread, and surely others, some degree interpretation is required in any translation. at best, looking at other translations is useful for insight into how someone at some time read something. at worst, you are simply interpreting someone else's interpretations. it really depends on the translation -- and how well its methods can be justified against the source language. ah. okay. cool. did you bother look up yom in your BDB? page 398. reading fail! the darkness came before the light on the first day -- thus, the day begins at sundown, and this is also why genesis always reads וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר instead of the reverse. you'll find 2,000 years of jewish tradition to reflect this, too. since it has come to my attention that you happen to live in florida, i suggest you find a couple of nice old jewish people, and ask them when shabbat (or shabbas) begins. oh, okay. so, when god created mankind, he made them in the image of god, and male and female. tell me, do you get this idea from something in the text? actually, i think you'll find that the endings in genesis 5:1 are singular, while the endings in genesis 5:2 are plural. this leads to the reading "mankind" or "man" instead of the proper name "adam", as in orlinsky's nJPS above. the name and the creation are singular (so it's a group) while the individuals are plural. um, no. you'll find that verse 2 happens to end with the very same construct. in fact, with one that is unarguably an infinitive construct: בְּיוֹם, הִבָּרְאָם. it's precisely identical to your chosen example from genesis 2:4, except that it lacks a prefix -- the temporal sense handled by the preposition that precedes it. but if the first verse is sufficient enough to imply "simultaneous" actions, why isn't the second? clearly, genesis 5:1 parrots the language genesis 1. this much is obvious. however, you are now inserting your (ludicrously hypothetical) gap between genesis 1 and genesis 2 -- NOT between genesis 1:1 and genesis 1:3 as previously stated (and commonly accepted among gap "theorists").the other issue is that it strains credulity. now, i happen to agree that genesis 1 and genesis 2 are sort of talking about different creations, in that genesis 1 is typically generalized ("adam" here means "mankind") and genesis 2/3/4 is a specific narrative ("adam" here is an individual person). however, genesis 5 clearly switches gears -- while the "adam" of verses 1 and 2 clearly imply the human race, the genealogy is of a very specific person.a very specific person who happens to name his son exactly the same thing as your supposedly different adam (and chavah) do in the previous chapter. to think this is coincidence seems sort of ad-hoc, and isn't really very believable. on the contrary, it states precisely what the text implies, as you yourself just stated when i asked you to explain the implications. you even went so far as to begin your explanation with precisely the same phrasing.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

yes, well, it isn't hard to fool a fool. then look harder. here's another hint: i've already given you another textbook. one that is a thousand pages of thorough syntax analysis. it has a whole chapter on prepositions. note, at the top of page 189,

quote:

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... and the complex prepositions, made up of a preposion + a noun (e.g.: ביד 'by, through' and בתוך 'in the midst of'; 11.3.1).

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and in 11.3.1 (page 221),

quote:

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Some nouns show a forzen union with a preposition. These complex constructions function syntactically as prepositions, that is, they link an ad-verbial noun to the verb and specify the nature of its relationship to the governed noun. For example, לפני 'before' can be local (cf. Gen 18:22), temporal (cf. Amos 1:1), referential (cf. Gen 7:1), or comparative (cf. 1 Sam 1:16)

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*headdesk*"is it an infinitive?" and "what kind of infinitive is it?" are two different questions. BDB says it's an infinitive. your crackpot source says it's an infinitive. rashi and orlinsky say it's an infinitive. is it an infinitive? if yes, what kind is it?you seem somehow confused by nested hierarchies of descriptions. that's like being confused because you don't know if i mean "red" or "blue" when i say "car". maybe i just mean it's a car. and once we've agreed that it's a car, we can discuss its color. yes, it is. you don't find it odd that, while listing the first time a noun was used in either of the two only cases for noun, they don't list the first time that noun was used? i would find that peculiar. oh, i agree. i find that translation problem for the same reason: the "when" must go at the beginning of the sentence. however, they are still translation the remainder of genesis 1:1 as a (temporal!) subordinate clause, and specifically used the word when, such that it would read,

quote:

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In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, [...] God said, "let there be light."

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why have they done this, do you suppose? man, life must be super easy if you can just ignore the inconvenient. you also apparently don't think very highly of BDB. what textbooks are you looking at? because the only ones i can find that make such cut-and-dry assertions that would seem to back your points up, lacking all nuance and subtlety and exceptional cases, look like they're aimed at gradeschoolers. please do elaborate on what you would consider a textbook example. peer reviewed academic papers? or do you have to be able to color in the pictures? then your textbook is lacking, and you aren't looking very hard.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Hint, the New Testament wasn't written in Hebrew.It is just a fact that the first translation of the Torah was translated into Greek. Point taken but I did not study Greek to study the LXX. I studied Greek because the New Testament was written in Greek. Yes, so what is your question? Yes, in the day.So I went to the text in which God created mankind in His image/likeness which happens to be Genesis 1:26-31.The word translated image also means likeness. That is why I usually use image/likeness but failed to do so this time. Well I was refering to the text of the day they were created in the image/likeness of God that he created them (them being a stand alone word). In 5:1 it is done with a suffix. How many times do I have to say I do not put a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2?I believe the light period that God created the Heaven and the Earth in ended in darkness that we find in Genesis 1:2.How long was it I don't know, God does not say.He does say in Genesis 1:5 the evening that had occured and the following morning was day one. Yes and the only man given a proper name is Seth. He is the first human named in Genesis.A transliteration is not a proper name. With all the other evidence and with 7 generations of people being born and cities being built I don't see how the man in Genesis 2:7 could have sired the person in Genesis 4:25, 26 and be only 130 years old as there was no nights to determine time by. In chapter 4 there is no ages given for anybody nor is there any deaths recorded other that Abel and the man slain by Lamech.So according to the recorded evidence I have I have to discard those two verses as being added by some redactor or copyist, as they thought there was just one story and tried to fix the problem. So which man is Orlinsky refering too?Is he refering to the one in Genesis 1:1 or the one in Genesis 2:7?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

protip: the book of genesis isn't in the new testament. hard to say for sure. it's the oldest translation that we have, yes. but seeing as how aramaic came into use roughly at the end of the biblical period (the latest books of the hebrew bible are written in aramaic) it's quite believable that the earliest translation of the torah would have been into aramaic.however, this is moving the goalposts. why, precisely, do you consider the translation more accurate than the source? that's fine. if i'd been especially interested in the NT, i would have done the same. however, we are not discussing the NT, and you brought up the LXX as some kind of argument. what does it say for genesis 2:4? interesting. tell me, why do you think that "in the day" implies simultaneous action? it still changes from singular to plural. there's no special exception because one is a suffix. okay. so you agree that the "creation" of genesis 1:1 describes the events to come in the chapter? that is putting a gap between verse 1 and verse 2. like i said, ask a jewish person. you're reading it wrong. the days start at night. this is just painfully dumb. i'm going to ignore the obvious, and instead give you a challenge: demonstrate how "seth" (or rather, shet) is any different than any other name in the book of genesis. they all come from words, they all have meanings, and most of them have etiological stories to go with them. okay. you know what? nevermind. let's stick to genesis 1:1. your so incredibly confused on a great many topics, it would drag this, and a thousand other threads astray. perhaps you should start your own thread on your gap theory interpretation, as this thread is rather specifically to discuss grammar.and since you are now using this kind of nonsense to ignore the grammatical evidence that has been presented, if you persist, i will find a moderator. he is referring to "mankind" for the first two verses, and the specific human being named "adam" afterwards. if you find this difficult to comprehend, i suggest you take a good hard look at theory, and try to find exactly what is wrong with the assumption of two separate adams.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Well a lot of those pages are missing.I think a lot more of them was missing from Moses texrbooks.Am I supposed to believe that a man that wrote on clay tablets 3500 years ago had access to a language so complicated that it takes a 1000 page textbook to explain how it works.That is beyond comprehension
Now I am not saying that the text with the MT vowels did not evolve to be a complicated language. But I doubt very seriously that it was that complicated when Moses wrote the Torah. I looked at the pages you referenced and many more but I do not see anything to support a construct in Genesis 1:1.I see where the bet on a noun preceeds a verb many times but none are infinitive constructs. Nor are they treated as such.If you got something to point out please do. Yes either one of those can do a lot of things whether they are alone or combined.What has that got to do with the text under discussion? On the record: בראשית Genises 1:1 is a feminine noun with a bet prefix on it translated In the beginning.
ברא in Genesis 1:1 is a Qal 3ps verb. translation created as it is completed action of the verb by the subject of the verb God.
בהבךאם in Genesis 2:4 is a Infinitive construct verb translated when they were created.
ביום in Genesis 2:4 is a masculine noun with a bet prefix translated in the day.
ביום in Genesis 5:1 is a masculine noun with a bet prefix absolute translated in the day that.
ברא In Genesis 5:1 is Qal. 3ps verb translated created.Does that answer your question?
Probably not. Are you saying that all nouns in Biblical Hebrew has to be either construct or absolute? They translated the words correctly and then got a 'when' out of thin air just like you do.They have no rules that supports a when in the statement as you don't for having one at the beginning as you want. You ran a stop sign at the beginning of verse two.You love the markings of the Masoretes and they put a little bitty disjunctive marker at the beginning of verse 2 turnig the conjunction into a disjunctive conjunction translated but. The Lxx used Now.If you don't like that you still have a conjunction there connecting Earth and the Earth.Oh I forgot you don't believe the Earth existed there even though the text says it does. No, life would be boring if there was no challenges. My books were written before the new age came along. Or yours has been overbloated with rules and regulations to make a Nomadic language into English.I have access to a book published in 1999 and it agrees with the ones I have at home. There is a few differences but when it comes to the temporal use of the bet and kaf they still agree.Now I know in the latest books many things have been added because we claim we are getting smarter.But we are complicating a very simple language because we want them to have spoken like we do.I know you don't like the mechanical text but that is probably a little better than they actually spoke, 3500 years ago.Do you remember how the locals decry Noah and people of his day. To hear them argue about the flood and Noah you would think Noah was like a lot of people in our country was a hundred years ago. They could not read or write and there are many in the world today in the condition.But you would have me believe they had a language as complicated as English.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

yes, google books does that. which is why i have changed the link slightly in this post, so that it should load the relevant pages. it might not, but searching for those particular topics on google will generally result in finding this book, including relevant pages.the point is that there are textbooks containing these features of syntax. you just have to look harder. again, authorship is off-topic here. and native speakers generally don't need textbooks. well, here are two things to consider:

1. perhaps your assumptions are wrong somewhere, and
2. you are posting in english -- yet you can easily find english syntax books closer to twice that length. am i supposed to believe that some crank on a message board has access to english, when it takes a 2,000 page textbook to explain it?

yours, perhaps. once again: the syntax rules for biblical hebrew are derived from the bible. it is the source text for biblical hebrew. notice that the syntax textbook uses only examples from the bible, and describes how the language functions in the bible. i'll give you a hint: combine this quote, and the last. infinitive constructs after complex prepositions. you've already been given several examples that are treated as such in this thread. and treated as such by your favoured sources. look, we've pointed out all kinds of stuff all over this thread. if you have a real argument to make other than "i forget my biblical hebrew grammar that i learned 50 years ago" please feel free to contribute it. that ביום and בראשית function as complex prepositions that modify the verb. in the beginning of. yes, but only because of the vowel pointings, added more than 1,000 years later by the masoretes. context indicates that it should be an infinitive construct. it's one kind of infinitive construct, yes. that doesn't mean that every infinitive construct of bara should look the same. prefixes and suffixes aside (i've explained repeatedly how the complex preposition and absolute in genesis 1:1 and genesis 5:1 function the same way), that verb is a different stem. it's niphil, not qal. why the inconsistency? they're the same phrase, in the same context. they're both being used as complex prepositions. it's a qal 3ps infinitive. see BDB page 135. no, because we haven't gotten past the "is it" phase, since you still disagree with your chosen sources. why do you disagree with BDB? if it is neither, what is it? interesting, you think BDB makes stuff up. why bother quoting them as a source, then, if you think they are unreliable and prone to speculation? and further, what happens when every academic source disagrees with you? are they all prone to speculation? absolutely i do. it functions as a complex preposition, which renders the whole phrase as functionally identical to a temporal infinitive construct. only with a separate preposition instead of a prepositional prefix, and an absolute noun instead of a pronominal suffix. okay. you make choose verse 2 as your independent clause. the question is, why did they render the majority of the first verse as subordinate? i believe you missed Message 76, where i detail precisely my opinion of vowels: i couldn't care less. did the earth already exist when god began creating it? kind of, yeah. creation in genesis 1 is more the act of organization and division than of "poofing" something into existence. the parts were already there. BDB, in 1906, is new age? man, you are old. shit, why don't i just ask you because you probably knew moses. once again, the rules of biblical hebrew are derived from the bible. this textbook is considered "an introduction". it's intermediate level text -- beyond the basic rules, and dealing with particular usages. this is how real language functions. they're not mechanical, but fluid. things change and develop: older biblical texts uses slightly different grammatical conventions than newer ones. but there is a lot of room for the author to be expressive. it doesn't all have to be formulated in a way that a third-grader can understand it. yes, and your textbook is probably missing a great deal. your mistake is in thinking that the simplified, general rules of grammar function uniformly in every text, across the board, and cover every usage. no language functions like this, or all authors would sound precisely the same. can we describe the grammar of shakespeare with a textbook that only describes the barest of elementary school grammar? probably not. does this mean that the texts that do dissect the grammar of shakespeare are "overbloated with rules" that complicate the language?no. it means the language can be complicated sometimes. perhaps it is only your comprehension that is simple. for point of fact, people are fully able to communicate "like we do" in modern hebrew, and modern hebrew is a good deal more simplified in comparison to biblical hebrew -- the same way that contemporary english usage is a good deal more simple than shakespeare. there are features of hebrew grammar (such as our discussed pronominal suffixes) that just aren't used in modern hebrew. sticking של in every possessive case is just inelegant and awkward, but the rule is far more consistent and simple. no, it's not even close! you think people spoke like that? that translation rapes the text's beauty and poetry, in favour of overly simplified rules that completely ignore context. context is pretty big in biblical hebrew. yes. but the people who wrote the bible could read and write. this is not an authorship assumption, either. it's a tautology: they wrote the bible. therefore, they could write. no, not as complicated as english. not nearly. english is largely as complicated as it is because it imports words and usages and bits of grammar from other languages on a regular basis. biblical hebrew did not do this. while it did borrow from its neighbours, most of those languages were also semitic. common language roots means easily compatible rules, with very little fuss.what i would have you believe is that biblical hebrew was a coherent language that, while it functioned according to grammatical rules, those rules were not robotic, and not necessarily so simple that two sentences in a textbook can describe them. i would have you believe that usage and grammatical context matter, and that the writing in the bible is not so formulaic that you can predict exactly what it will say next and how it will say it. i would have you believe that the bible is a work of beautiful poetry, and not a "see spot run" reader for children. i would also have you believe that learning hebrew is the best method through which to appreciate the poetic qualities.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, The authors say which pages are allowed to be viewed so they can sell the books. That is very possible.How do I find out if I am right or wrong?Would you be willing to partacipate in a thread assuming my version is correct and examine the possibilities of what could have taken place if I was correct? No it is not.We have to take the language and take it apart. Then we have to put it back together again. In doing so we conclude that they put it together like we did.The problem is we only have our knowledge to go on so our worldview and knowledge gets in the way.We may discover how they did it or we might discover how we would have done it.The latter is what I think we have done. BDB translated בראשית as a stand alone noun. They did not translate it as a noun in the construct position.So where did you get the of from? I thought it was because it was a root word and all root words are listed in the lexicon. That is what my text books tell me. The only possible stem ברא could be in and look as it does is in the Pi'el Infinitive construct Intensive Active.For ברא to be in the Niphal infinitive construct simple passive as you claim it would look like this חברא .The Pi'el Infinitive construct Intensive Active looks just like the Qal. 3ps. Imp. Without the vowels they are identical. I have always been told it was a noun. And in Biblical Hebrew when two nouns are side by side the first one is said to be in the construct position and the second one is said to be in the absolute position. No. They translated the words corectly.They just let bias bring then to the wrong conclusion and added the when. Are you saying that the addition of the prefix ב which is translated in, on, with, or by on a noun on ראשית makes the noun a preposition?

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arachnophilia writes:

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perhaps it is only your comprehension that is simple. for point of fact, people are fully able to communicate "like we do" in modern hebrew, and modern hebrew is a good deal more simplified in comparison to biblical hebrew

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You need to refresh your history.

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arachnophilia writes:

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yes. but the people who wrote the bible could read and write. this is not an authorship assumption, either. it's a tautology: they wrote the bible. therefore, they could write.

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But you assume their education was equal to your.

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arachnophilia writes:

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what i would have you believe is that biblical hebrew was a coherent language that, while it functioned according to grammatical rules, those rules were not robotic, and not necessarily so simple that two sentences in a textbook can describe them. i would have you believe that usage and grammatical context matter, and that the writing in the bible is not so formulaic that you can predict exactly what it will say next and how it will say it. i would have you believe that the bible is a work of beautiful poetry, and not a "see spot run" reader for children. i would also have you believe that learning hebrew is the best method through which to appreciate the poetic qualities.

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I understand perfectly that you believe the author of the Torah had a PHD equal to one from Harvard.

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Now before you bless me out and tell me how stupid I am for the Niphal, Pi'el comments I suggest you consult an expert.

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God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

no, it seems to be a random assortment, within an allotment of pages per search/view/etc. with some creative searching, i was able read the contents of the other pages... which explains how i was able to quote those pages. with a few typos, of course, as you can't copy the text. they're trying to sell books or something.the interesting point is not that i was searching within the book, but that i was searching everywhere, and this book happened to come up any time you search for the specific grammatical concepts we've been talking about. with the relevant sections readable. which tells that if you'd even bothered to google these topics, you could have found answers. research biblical hebrew. and other languages. try and understand how they actually work beyond the most simple mechanics they teach to 5 year olds. here's a hint -- you'll get a much better picture from using the language yourself. perhaps, but i would have to see the PNT. i think it would be more worthwhile to examine those assumptions. but this, of course, has been done before. yes, it is. there is no other source. i know you'd like to imagine that a bunch of rogue 21st century scholars just make up stuff and pretend it says something about the bible, but that's just not the case. rather, they look at the bible, and try to tell how its grammar functions. like i said. research other languages. specifically, dead ones. okay. perhaps this should be another PNT. you should actually make your argument there, and use some evidence to back it up. because all i can see in this thread is you rambling on about how you would have done, in spite of the academic descriptions of how it was actually done. because it functions as a complex preposition. and it does so in nearly every other grammatically similar occurrence in the text. had the author not wanted it do so, he would have used a different word. no. roots are roots. most (perhaps all) qal 3ps verbs look like their roots, yes. but they are not the only verbal forms that can look like the root as well -- vowels removed. ah, yes. so it would. luckily, it does. notice the spelling in genesis 2:4: bet-hey-bet-resh-alef-mem. what's the extra hey in there for? if it were a definite article, it would be contracted into the bet (as already discussed), but i'm not really sure verbs can have definite articles. perhaps infinitives can, i dunno. i'd have to look that one up. okay. what about when a noun precedes an infinitive? interesting. so you think BDB makes stuff up. sort of. but not exactly. notice the example i used above, "in the midst of". "midst" is perfectly capable of being a noun, in principle. but it's generally meaningless without something to modify. and you need to take a biblical hebrew class that was taught after 1960. and a modern hebrew class, too, if you want to compare. no, i don't. i make no assumptions about their education. though i will concede that i presume they spoke their language better than i do. and that they likely did so intuitively, as people who speak languages usually do. they didn't go flipping through textbooks, because it wasn't some kind of code to them. it was what they spoke on a day-to-day basis.you, on the other hand, are assuming that they followed a rigid set of simple rules that are the equivalent of a gradeschool education in grammar. verb, subject, object. verb, subject, object. ho hum. no, i do not. i just don't think language is nearly as simple as you make it out to be. using language as a native speaker, and describing language are two entirely different pursuits. it might take a trained mechanic to describe how precisely my car functions, but you better believe that i drive it to work every morning. the fact that its machinery and processes are complex enough that it would take me many years to explore every variation of every car design doesn't mean that i can't gain the utility, and operate some small portion of that machinery.so while i might take a harvard PHD to describe all the facets of biblical hebrew grammar, that doesn't mean that the authors of the bible didn't use some portion of that grammar. as i've pointed out, this is much more so the case with english -- its introductory syntax books are TWICE the length, and i doubt i could tell every way in which an infinitive works in english. in fact, while researching for this thread earlier, i discovered several new ways infinitives are used without prepositions in english. ways that i would be surprised if i hadn't used in this very thread. formal descriptions of usage, and just using words according to those usages are two entirely different matters that take two entirely different levels of education.you'll also note that while i intuitively understood genesis 1:1 a particular way, finding the appropriate description for that grammatical function has been tricky. you would have similar difficulty in any language you learn, as opposed to picking tidbits out of textbooks. this is why i have suggested you try your methodology on english. you will be surprised to find that you can't describe accurately half of the grammatical functions you use on a regular basis.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, We don't have the source.We have copies of copies of copies of copies, of copies, of copies and I don't know how many copies.But for the last 1800 years the Masoretts have been copying and perfecting the MT. They had some things in it that they had to change because early Christians would not accept their version the way they were preserving it. So they compromised so it would be accepted. I mentioned that the LXX translators translated the conjunction between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 as a disjunctive conjunction. The Masoretes placed a mark to denote a disjunctive conjunction. And the LXX translators did it 2300 years ago.That would mean the previous statement was a independent clause. For ברא BDB says a temporal conj. in their being created=when they were created.For יום
In Genesis 2:4 BDB says it is a n.m. Gn. 1:5 day,..... cstr. Gn. 2:4 but give no meaning or translation but the construction and vowels are the same.

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There is no noun in Genesis 2:4 following יום to place it in the construct.

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Since ברא is a temporal plural verb with a bet prefix translated when they were created, the statement "These are the birthings of the heaven and the earth when they were created." This is a complete independent sentence so there is nothing preceeding יום to modify it.

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arachnophilia writes:

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interesting. tell me, why do you think that "in the day" implies simultaneous action?

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I just can't see him speaking in the morning to create one mankind and then in the evening to create another mankind.

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I can see him speaking all all humans he created coming into existence at one time.

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But he did have a 12 hour light period to do the job in as He said there was evening after He created them male and female.

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arachnophilia writes:

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okay. so you agree that the "creation" of genesis 1:1 describes the events to come in the chapter

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No.

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In Genesis 1:1 the Heavens and the Earth came into existence I call that T=10^-43 secs.

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Everything that existed at that time exists today.

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Genesis 1:2 describes a series of events that took place in time past.

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Genesis 2:4-25 took place at an earlier time in the past.

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arachnophilia writes:

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that is putting a gap between verse 1 and verse 2.

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It was a light period that ended when the darkness in Genesis 1:2 began to exist. It ended with the morning of the second day and was called day one by God. That means there was no day before that day.

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Why don't we discuss this in a thread as I suggested?

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arachnophilia writes:

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like i said, ask a jewish person. you're reading it wrong. the days start at night.

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Start counting with the evening an the morning being the first day and see how many 24 hour periods you can get in the rest of the story prior to Genesis 2:4.

arachnophilia writes:

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this is just painfully dumb. i'm going to ignore the obvious, and instead give you a challenge: demonstrate how "seth" (or rather, shet) is any different than any other name in the book of genesis.

שֵׁת is transliterated Sheth and translated Sheth 2 times in the Torah. It is also translated Seth 7 times. Seth = compensation but is never translated as such.

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אָדָם transliteration adam = red.
Translated Adam 9 times.
Translated man 408 times.
Translated person 8 times.
Translated hypocrite 1 time.

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Do you see the difference?

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arachnophilia writes:

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assumption of two separate adams.

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I don't assume two separate creation stories most scholars agree that there is two creation stories.

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If there is two stories there is two men.

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God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

yes. and bits along the way, like the DSS, that confirm that the vast majority of it was copied extremely well. the LXX even backs this up, too. the question is, why should we value the LXX over the MT? nonsense. eh, not so much. uh huh. interesting. remember when you asked how to know if you were wrong? well, here's a way. how exactly do they have a noun in construct, when it's followed by a verb?

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perhaps you should look up the verb that follows it. pg 793.

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Since ברא is a temporal plural verb with a bet prefix translated when they were created, the statement "These are the birthings of the heaven and the earth when they were created." This is a complete independent sentence so there is nothing preceeding יום to modify it.

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yes. יום starts a new story.

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arachnophilia writes:

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interesting. tell me, why do you think that "in the day" implies simultaneous action?

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I just can't see him speaking in the morning to create one mankind and then in the evening to create another mankind.

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I can see him speaking all all humans he created coming into existence at one time.

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okay. so, nothing in the text, then?

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arachnophilia writes:

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okay. so you agree that the "creation" of genesis 1:1 describes the events to come in the chapter

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No.

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okay. so there's two creations, one in genesis 1:1, and one afterwards beginning in genesis 1:3? i thought you said you didn't insert the gap here. please clarify.

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In Genesis 1:1 the Heavens and the Earth came into existence I call that T=10^-43 secs.

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Everything that existed at that time exists today.

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Genesis 1:2 describes a series of events that took place in time past.

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Genesis 2:4-25 took place at an earlier time in the past.

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i'm sorry, but that just makes no sense whatsoever. go back and read genesis 1-4, read what you wrote, and think it over. how is 1:1 "in the beginning" in the absolute sense you argue so hard for if there was an "earlier time"? why does 1:1 come after 1:2?

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It was a light period that ended when the darkness in Genesis 1:2 began to exist. It ended with the morning of the second day and was called day one by God. That means there was no day before that day.

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there was no light before light was created. are you even reading the text at all? none of this makes any sense. the story is the story of creation, not "assume everything in verse 1, proceed to ignore everything afterwards".

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Why don't we discuss this in a thread as I suggested?

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it's your crazy idea. you make the PNT. i'll participate.

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Start counting with the evening an the morning being the first day and see how many 24 hour periods you can get in the rest of the story prior to Genesis 2:4.

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i count 7. no surprises there.

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שֵׁת is transliterated Sheth and translated Sheth 2 times in the Torah. It is also translated Seth 7 times. Seth = compensation but is never translated as such.

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yech. pick a transliteration and stick to it. i'm happy with "shet" if you prefer. in any case:

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quote:

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וַתִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ שֵׁת: כִּי שָׁת-לִי אֱלֹהִים, זֶרַע אַחֵר

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-- Genesis 4:25

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only the vowels are different. and we all know how you feel about those.

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אָדָם transliteration adam = red.
Translated Adam 9 times.
Translated man 408 times.
Translated person 8 times.
Translated hypocrite 1 time.

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Do you see the difference?

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yes, context matters. case in point, you might want to look things up before you copy them out of your concordance. the phrase being translated as "hypocrite" is אָדָם חָנֵף. literally, "flattering person". it's not really adam being translated "hypocrite" but rather chanef.

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arachnophilia writes:

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assumption of two separate adams.

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I don't assume two separate creation stories most scholars agree that there is two creation stories.

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...not actually what i said.

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If there is two stories there is two men.

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doesn't follow. there are two stories about abraham lying about his "sister" sarah. were there two abrahams? or are they two different stories about the same person? there is a book of samuel, and a book of chronicles. both talk about king david. how many kings name david were there? there are four gospels of jesus. there must have been four jesuses, correct?

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אָרַח

Hi arach, I had searched but it did not come up as I had not hit the magic word.It did come up in a later search after you posted the link. How can you be so sure we are right when we do not have a dictionary of the original words and we do not have the original words to examine? Where?OK I will put it together and private message it to you. Then you can decide. How many times does it appear in the Torah with a bet prefix? You are partly right, the only problem is there is only one and it is Pi'el infinitive construct Intensive active. Well ברא is not an infinitive. You ain't playing the game fair.You were supposed to correct me and tell me how stupid I was or at least how ignorant I was.It would actually have to look like this בהבריא to be Hiphil Causative Active infinitive construct.An infinitive construct or absolute cannot be singular or plural. They did not make anything up. They translated the words properly.But when they came to their conlusions they decided it had to be temporal and added a when.So they did not make anything up they just let their bias get in the way of their translation. Sure you do. You think their Hebrew was more complicated than modern Hebrew. You said so yourself. Jack went up the Hill.Jack=n. a proper name.
went=v. 1. Past tense of go1.
up=adj. a. In or to a higher position: looking up
the=def.art. a. Used before singular or plural nouns and noun phrases that denote particular, specified persons or things: the baby; the dress I wore.
Hill=n. 1. A well-defined natural elevation smaller than a mountain.That could be.
Jack went up the small mountain.
Or
Jack went up the hill.
Source of definitions.
God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

okay. it comes up in searches. you can look this stuff up. like i said, research other languages, specifically dead ones. see if you can find how we know words mean in a language nobody has used for several thousand years. i'll give you a hint: it has something to do with context, and piecing together meaning based on words' relationships to one another. any thread on the documentary hypothesis, for instance. in Message 189, i linked you to an article that details the 20 or so times it's used in genesis alone, 13 in which it functions as referring to a specific day, and 7 in which is takes a looser temporal context. not coincidentally, the vowels are different between these two cases. but i know you don't care about that. i don't know what you mean. you can make an infinitive in any tense. it is in genesis 5:1, according to BDB and just about everyone else. except you. i believe that pointing out that you correctly predicted the form it should take, but didn't bother to see if it actually took that form, is a much better argument about your stupidity and/or ignorance. i'm not out to insult you -- if you're correct, i'll be happy to say so. i believe that is fair game. no. correct. but the pronominal suffix (either the object or the subject) of the infinitive can be. so they make stuff up. ...so they make stuff up. it was. did you not read my post? try this sentence:

quote:

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How can you be so sure we are right when we do not have a dictionary of the original words and we do not have the original words to examine?

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please explain independent vs subordinate clauses, the effect of the preposition, and where "be" and "do" exist in time relative to one another.

Hi arach,Sorry about taking so long to reply had to take a trip to San Antonio as my son was in the hospital. How do you do that when Biblical Hebrew does not have tenses? It can be considered a Kal infinitive noun only because of the vowel points placed on it by the Masoretes some 1000 years ago.Out of 270+ different forms of ברא
2 are made infinitive nouns by vowels. 32 are made infinitive nouns by suffixes.So before vowels were added there was 32 ways to make an infinitive noun out of ברא Why not? ברא only has Kal, Piel, and Pual Bin.ABE: These are the only ones that had an infinitive noun.But if there was a Hiphil Causative Active it would be as I presented. Why? In English or Biblical Hebrew?God Bless,Edited by ICANT, : add ABE

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

that's ok, hope your son is okay. biblical hebrew doesn't have temporal tenses, right. you'll have to forgive me, i was referring to verb stems in the colloquial "tense". it should read, more properly, "you can make an infinitive in any stem." no, that's nonsense. the masoretes put those vowels on it because it was read as an infinitive due to grammatical context. they didn't pull the vowels out of thin air just to annoy you. even without the vowels, there quite a few contextual reasons to read it as an infinitive. again, BDB disagrees. in english. and because i suspect that you do not really comprehend the difference between using grammar, and being able to explain the rules in textbook-level detail.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Not really, Hitpael, and Hufal does not have an infinitive. Then present the supporting argumentation. I was using an Ancient Biblical Hebrew verb chart.But my new program that gives some 270 parseings of ברא also disagrees with me. They give the Hifil infinitive as: לְהַבְרִיא Are you telling me if I don't comprehend English as you do I can not understand Ancient Biblical Hebrew?Both are clauses and have verbs and a subject.
Independent stands alone and subordinate (dependent) can't stand alone.In English 'Be' is a verb that can be used to denote was, were, been, being, am, are, and is. Be is the action of existing in some tense.In English 'Do' is a verb that can be used to denote did, done, doing, and does. Do is the result of action in some tense.They can both exist in any tense.Now if you have a specific question ask it.But what does this have to do with Ancient Biblical Hebrew?Ancient Biblical Hebrew has verbless clauses and verbal clauses and no tenses.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."