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Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 11:14 pm
by SteveMiller
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: So did God create light in v1 or v3?
Before verse 3 there was no light. The earth was absolutely still, not moving. We’re talking about 0° K. In verse 3 God didn’t “create” light, i.e. as a new creation, rather he had light come into being. Or in physics terms, God warmed up the earth and started the atoms jiggling, and as the atoms jiggled, light came forth.
v2 says "waters", not "ice". So it couldn't be 0 degrees Kelvin.
v2 says "darkness was on the face of the deep". But if light did not exist yet, darkness was everywhere. Not just on the surface of the earth which was covered with water. If I say, My house was dark, that implies that other houses were not dark.
In the six days in Gen 1, God did nothing in the night. The repeated formula is: There was morning, and then God worked, and then there was evening, and then there was the morning of the next day. Would God create the heavens and the earth in the dark?
kwrandolph wrote: What do you mean by “science”?

The science I was taught in state universities and in secular science textbooks unanimously limits science to the study of observable phenomena where the observations are repeatable, from which are derived hypotheses and theories and against which theories and hypotheses are tested. That definition limits science to the study of present, physical processes. The past is no longer observable, therefore cannot be studied by science. Science cannot study ideas like justice, aesthetics, love, mercy, etc. because these and similar concepts are not observable. Any theory that depends on unobservable “facts” by definition cannot be a scientific theory. That definition limits science able to discuss only a small window of total knowledge.

According to that definition, no dating method is scientific, because they are all based on unobservable presuppositions. Fossils are dug out of the ground, but we cannot observe how and when they were formed. People can guess, based on their religious choices and presuppositions, but those guesses by definition are not science.
I agree with your definition of science. It is a verifiable fact that dinosaurs covered the earth at one time. And all the many species of dinosaurs, from the size of a chicken to many times bigger than elephants, cannot be found. I think dinosaur remains are evidence of a previous creation on this earth between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. If dinosaurs were part of this creation, then God would have saved 2 of each kind on the ark, and there would still be some of most of the kinds of dinosaurs around today.
I do not know of any verifiable evidence of humans existing at the same time as dinos.

Either dinosaurs were part of this creation or they were part of a previous creation on this earth.
If they were part of this creation then God saved 2 of each kind on the ark and some of most of the kinds should still be around today.
If they were part of a previous creation it would have to be in between Gen 1:1 and 1:2.
kwrandolph wrote:Fresh dinosaur tracks in wet mud have been recorded in the area around the Licouri Swamp in Africa, for centuries. Natives tell they prefer to stay in water, and which fruits they like to eat. Job 40:21–23. That’s just one example, there are others in other areas of the earth.
I can't find anything about Licouri swamp or fresh dino tracks on the web.
The behemoth in Job 40:15-24 is not a dinosaur.
It is a mammal because it has a naval v16
I think it is one of the Sirenia species: manatee, dugong or listed-as-extinct sea cow.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:Another reason for a time gap is that today we can see stars which are 13 billion light years away turn into super novas and burn up. We are seeing an event that happened 13 billion years ago.
How do the “scientists” know the distances and times? The times are no longer observable, and the distances merely guesses based on the guessed times.
The speed of light is verifiable. It can be consistently measured.
The distance to stars is verifiable. Triangulation from the earth and from satellites has been used to measure the distance to the sun and 1000's of stars.
For stars outside our galaxy, the distance calculation is based on the type of star and brightness diminishing according to distance squared. A description is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder
Young earth creationist sites like answersingenesis agree with the science that the stars in distant galaxies are really that far away.

If you believe that God made all the stars on the 4th day, then you would have to believe that all the supernovas that we can see are < 6,000 light years away.
I think when God made the stars on the 4th day, He made the stars in our galaxy, which are the only stars visible to the naked eye.
I think God created the other stars when he created the heavens in v1, which was a long time before day one in Gen 1:3.
kwrandolph wrote:And there’s no linguistic indication of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that I know of.

Do you have a different definition for “science”?

Karl W. Randolph.
I have the same definition of science as you.
Implications of a gap between Gen 1:1 and 2 in the text:
1. Day one began in verse 3. Then there is no Biblical timeline back to verses 1 and 2.
2. Day one is called yom echad instead of yom harishon, while the subsequent 6 days use the ordinal numbers, 2nd, 3rd, etc. This implies that day one was not the first day ever.
3. v2 says the earth became tohu and bohu. The only other times tohu and bohu are used together is to describe a destruction by the judgment of God.

Thanks, Karl.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 10:30 am
by kwrandolph
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: So did God create light in v1 or v3?
Before verse 3 there was no light. The earth was absolutely still, not moving. We’re talking about 0° K. In verse 3 God didn’t “create” light, i.e. as a new creation, rather he had light come into being. Or in physics terms, God warmed up the earth and started the atoms jiggling, and as the atoms jiggled, light came forth.
v2 says "waters", not "ice". So it couldn't be 0 degrees Kelvin.
Was there even a word for “ice” at that time? Is there a word for “ice” any time from when Biblical Hebrew was natively spoken (i.e. before the Babylonian exile)? Ice is water.
SteveMiller wrote:v2 says "darkness was on the face of the deep". But if light did not exist yet, darkness was everywhere. Not just on the surface of the earth which was covered with water. If I say, My house was dark, that implies that other houses were not dark.
That implication is a logical fallacy. Usually when “My house was dark” the whole neighborhood, if not the whole town, was also dark (power failure).
SteveMiller wrote:In the six days in Gen 1, God did nothing in the night. The repeated formula is: There was morning, and then God worked, and then there was evening, and then there was the morning of the next day. Would God create the heavens and the earth in the dark?
Why not? There was no light yet, and light needs matter in order to exist. God created the matter that could produce light.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote: What do you mean by “science”?

The science I was taught in state universities and in secular science textbooks unanimously limits science to the study of observable phenomena where the observations are repeatable, from which are derived hypotheses and theories and against which theories and hypotheses are tested. That definition limits science to the study of present, physical processes. The past is no longer observable, therefore cannot be studied by science. Science cannot study ideas like justice, aesthetics, love, mercy, etc. because these and similar concepts are not observable. Any theory that depends on unobservable “facts” by definition cannot be a scientific theory. That definition limits science able to discuss only a small window of total knowledge.

According to that definition, no dating method is scientific, because they are all based on unobservable presuppositions. Fossils are dug out of the ground, but we cannot observe how and when they were formed. People can guess, based on their religious choices and presuppositions, but those guesses by definition are not science.
I agree with your definition of science. It is a verifiable fact that dinosaurs covered the earth at one time. And all the many species of dinosaurs, from the size of a chicken to many times bigger than elephants, cannot be found.
“Cannot be found” or “Will not be found”? There’s a big difference between those two.

Natives living in Africa are scared of them, and with good reason—they’re big and they attack people, especially when the people are in canoes on the river. There have been numerous and continuing sightings of them, including one in the early 1960s when a Westerner got some 8mm footage of creatures standing in water, long sinuous necks reaching up into trees to eat the fruits. (I wonder what happened to that film?) The area where they are sighted is very difficult to get to, and the travel to get there can be a story of its own. The first descriptions of it that got to the west date from the 1700s, long before the term “dinosaur” was coined.

A fairly decent description of them is found in http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Mokele_mbembe
SteveMiller wrote:I think dinosaur remains are evidence of a previous creation on this earth between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. If dinosaurs were part of this creation, then God would have saved 2 of each kind on the ark, and there would still be some of most of the kinds of dinosaurs around today.
Not necessarily, seeing as how humans have been so destructive of God’s creation. Especially when dealing with animals that are dangerous to humans and/or destructive of human possessions.

Yet there are reports from difficult to get to places of several different kinds of dinosaurs, including T-Rex, sauropods, different flying dinosaurs, different seagoing dinosaurs, and a strange loathing of western “scientists” (defined as those who believe in Darwinian evolution) to follow up on those reports. Instead those “scientists” are so quick to call those sightings unproven at best, false at most.
SteveMiller wrote:I do not know of any verifiable evidence of humans existing at the same time as dinos.
Again that word “verifiable”, what do you mean by that? Seen by those who are trying not to see? Who try to hide any reports of sightings? Who call any such reports “hoaxes” if they become known? In short, people who put greater trust in fallen human intellect than on the Word of God.

What about descriptions in old literature and historical sources? What about surviving artwork? What about modern native reports? Don’t those count?
SteveMiller wrote:Either dinosaurs were part of this creation or they were part of a previous creation on this earth.
If they were part of this creation then God saved 2 of each kind on the ark and some of most of the kinds should still be around today.
If they were part of a previous creation it would have to be in between Gen 1:1 and 1:2.
What evidence is there that there was a previous creation? Linguistically, I see none. This is a question of Biblical Hebrew.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:Fresh dinosaur tracks in wet mud have been recorded in the area around the Licouri Swamp in Africa, for centuries. Natives tell they prefer to stay in water, and which fruits they like to eat. Job 40:21–23. That’s just one example, there are others in other areas of the earth.
I can't find anything about Licouri swamp or fresh dino tracks on the web.
The behemoth in Job 40:15-24 is not a dinosaur.
It is a mammal because it has a naval v16
I think it is one of the Sirenia species: manatee, dugong or listed-as-extinct sea cow.
Sorry, I misspelled it, as can be seen by my link above.

Ancient art show that sauropods gave birth to live young, they would have navels.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:Another reason for a time gap is that today we can see stars which are 13 billion light years away turn into super novas and burn up. We are seeing an event that happened 13 billion years ago.
How do the “scientists” know the distances and times? The times are no longer observable, and the distances merely guesses based on the guessed times.
The speed of light is verifiable. It can be consistently measured.
Has the speed of light remained constant over time? Is it constant throughout the universe? After all, light going through different materials has different speeds, what about throughout the universe where we can’t measure all the effects?
SteveMiller wrote: The distance to stars is verifiable. Triangulation from the earth and from satellites has been used to measure the distance to the sun and 1000's of stars.
Triangulation works for only relatively short distances, and is based on the assumption that the distant stars are so far away that even the earth’s orbit is only the equivalent of a mathematical dot in comparison to the distances.
SteveMiller wrote:For stars outside our galaxy, the distance calculation is based on the type of star and brightness diminishing according to distance squared. A description is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder
Young earth creationist sites like answersingenesis agree with the science that the stars in distant galaxies are really that far away.

If you believe that God made all the stars on the 4th day, then you would have to believe that all the supernovas that we can see are < 6,000 light years away.
What is the distance of a light year? What is the speed of light in interstellar space? What is the speed of light outside the Milky Way? Has the speed of light remained constant since creation ca. 6000 years ago? There are assumptions being made that we presently cannot measure. If those assumptions are correct, then those distances are accurate, but if any of those assumptions are wrong …

Because we are dealing with things that cannot be observed, are those distances scientific?
SteveMiller wrote:I think when God made the stars on the 4th day, He made the stars in our galaxy, which are the only stars visible to the naked eye.
I think God created the other stars when he created the heavens in v1, which was a long time before day one in Gen 1:3.
kwrandolph wrote:And there’s no linguistic indication of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that I know of.

Do you have a different definition for “science”?

Karl W. Randolph.
I have the same definition of science as you.
Implications of a gap between Gen 1:1 and 2 in the text:
There are no implications of a gap based on the linguistics of Biblical Hebrew.
SteveMiller wrote: 1. Day one began in verse 3. Then there is no Biblical timeline back to verses 1 and 2.
All our measurements of time are based on motion, movement of physical matter. Where there is no movement, there’s no measurement of time.
SteveMiller wrote:2. Day one is called yom echad instead of yom harishon, while the subsequent 6 days use the ordinal numbers, 2nd, 3rd, etc. This implies that day one was not the first day ever.
Even in modern English we say “Day one…” instead of “First day…” when we want to emphasize the numerical aspect of the day, so why not also in Biblical Hebrew?
SteveMiller wrote:3. v2 says the earth became tohu and bohu. The only other times tohu and bohu are used together is to describe a destruction by the judgment of God.
You have only two other examples, too small a sample to make a definitive statement.
SteveMiller wrote:Thanks, Karl.
You can believe whatever you want, that’s between you and God.

Where I cannot agree is when:

1) people contradict the Word of God as it is understood linguistically in its original languages. For this forum, that’s Biblical Hebrew.

2) people claim that certain beliefs or conclusions are science even when they violate the rules of what makes a study science.

#1 is more important than #2.

3) people who put more trust in #2 than on #1 thereby saying that the Word of God is false.

All the evidence I know of from a study of Biblical Hebrew is that Genesis 1:2 is a continuation of Genesis 1:1 to describe the original status of the earth that God had just created. Linguistically, I see no evidence of a gap, or more succinctly, evidence that there is no gap. Then in verse 3 the first light, before which there was no light.

Further, there’s nothing from science, as I was taught it, that would contradict the above paragraph.

Make of that what you want.

Karl W. Randolph.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 11:11 pm
by SteveMiller
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: v2 says "waters", not "ice". So it couldn't be 0 degrees Kelvin.
Was there even a word for “ice” at that time? Is there a word for “ice” any time from when Biblical Hebrew was natively spoken (i.e. before the Babylonian exile)? Ice is water.
קָ֑רַח is ice. ‎מָּֽיִם , used 583 times, never refers to ice. When snow melts, it becomes maim (Job 24:19).
maim denotes instability and weakness (Gen 49:4; Josh 7:5; Ps 22:14; Ezek 7:17; 21:7)
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:v2 says "darkness was on the face of the deep". But if light did not exist yet, darkness was everywhere. Not just on the surface of the earth which was covered with water. If I say, My house was dark, that implies that other houses were not dark.
That implication is a logical fallacy. Usually when “My house was dark” the whole neighborhood, if not the whole town, was also dark (power failure).
The author is omniscient. If I am flying in a helicopter over Detroit, and I report back, everything south of 8 Mile Road is dark, that implies that north of 8 Mile Road there is some light. Just the statement that it is dark south of 8 Mile road does not imply that north of 8 Mile has light. But coming from a source that can see the whole situation, it does.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:In the six days in Gen 1, God did nothing in the night. The repeated formula is: There was morning, and then God worked, and then there was evening, and then there was the morning of the next day. Would God create the heavens and the earth in the dark?
Why not? There was no light yet, and light needs matter in order to exist. God created the matter that could produce light.
Doesn't matter also need energy to exist? The electrons are rotating around the nucleus.
kwrandolph wrote:
A fairly decent description of them is found in http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Mokele_mbembe
Thanks Karl. There does seem to be some kind of big creature there. Too bad there are no pictures of it. The footprints may be fake, as the creature is supposed to be about 2/3 the size of an elephant, but the footprints are up to 3 feet diameter, about 50% bigger than an elephant's. The creature spends most of its time under water. If it can breathe under water, it is not a dinosaur. There are lots of under water creatures that have not been discovered.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:I think dinosaur remains are evidence of a previous creation on this earth between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. If dinosaurs were part of this creation, then God would have saved 2 of each kind on the ark, and there would still be some of most of the kinds of dinosaurs around today.
Not necessarily, seeing as how humans have been so destructive of God’s creation. Especially when dealing with animals that are dangerous to humans and/or destructive of human possessions.
How many species have gone extinct due to humans or from other causes? Mammoths and Mastodons, which are basically elephants. Sea Cows. Flightless birds - which are flying birds that lost their ability to fly after adapting to an island that has no land animals.
Could humans have caused all 700 species of dinosaurs to be officially extinct?
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:I do not know of any verifiable evidence of humans existing at the same time as dinos.
Again that word “verifiable”, what do you mean by that? Seen by those who are trying not to see? Who try to hide any reports of sightings? Who call any such reports “hoaxes” if they become known? In short, people who put greater trust in fallen human intellect than on the Word of God.

What about descriptions in old literature and historical sources? What about surviving artwork? What about modern native reports? Don’t those count?
Verifiable would be a picture or a fossil record of humans with dinos.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:Either dinosaurs were part of this creation or they were part of a previous creation on this earth.
If they were part of this creation then God saved 2 of each kind on the ark and some of most of the kinds should still be around today.
If they were part of a previous creation it would have to be in between Gen 1:1 and 1:2.
What evidence is there that there was a previous creation? Linguistically, I see none. This is a question of Biblical Hebrew.
I don't read the Biblical text in a vacuum. It's ok to compare it to facts.
I'm just saying here that your position demands that dinosaurs still exist today.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: The behemoth in Job 40:15-24 is not a dinosaur.
It is a mammal because it has a naval v16
I think it is one of the Sirenia species: manatee, dugong or listed-as-extinct sea cow.
Ancient art show that sauropods gave birth to live young, they would have navels.
Here is a respected YEC (young earth creationist) site that has studied dinos a lot. They say dinos laid eggs. If any gave birth to live young, they did so by laying the eggs inside themselves and hatching them inside. So no navel.
https://creation.com/did-all-dinosaurs-lay-eggs

kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:2. Day one is called yom echad instead of yom harishon, while the subsequent 6 days use the ordinal numbers, 2nd, 3rd, etc. This implies that day one was not the first day ever.
Even in modern English we say “Day one…” instead of “First day…” when we want to emphasize the numerical aspect of the day, so why not also in Biblical Hebrew?
In English when we say "day one" it means "day #1", which is actually using it as an ordinal number. In Hebrew yom echad means "one day", as in a quantity of one days. There is only one context that I know of in Biblical Hebrew where cardinal numbers are used as ordinal: that is in the days of a month. There it will use the cardinal number followed by ‎ לחֹ֑דֶשׁ.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:3. v2 says the earth became tohu and bohu. The only other times tohu and bohu are used together is to describe a destruction by the judgment of God.
You have only two other examples, too small a sample to make a definitive statement.
I agree. It is evidence. Not a definitive statement.

kwrandolph wrote:You can believe whatever you want, that’s between you and God.

Where I cannot agree is when:

1) people contradict the Word of God as it is understood linguistically in its original languages. For this forum, that’s Biblical Hebrew.
We always agree that it's ok to disagree. I have not seen you show me anything where my interpretation contradicts the Word of God.
kwrandolph wrote:2) people claim that certain beliefs or conclusions are science even when they violate the rules of what makes a study science.

#1 is more important than #2.

3) people who put more trust in #2 than on #1 thereby saying that the Word of God is false.
I put more trust in #1 just like you do. I don't put much trust in an interpretation of #1 apart from #1.
kwrandolph wrote:All the evidence I know of from a study of Biblical Hebrew is that Genesis 1:2 is a continuation of Genesis 1:1 to describe the original status of the earth that God had just created. Linguistically, I see no evidence of a gap, or more succinctly, evidence that there is no gap.
What is the evidence that there is no gap?

Thanks again, Karl.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:15 am
by kwrandolph
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: v2 says "waters", not "ice". So it couldn't be 0 degrees Kelvin.
Was there even a word for “ice” at that time? Is there a word for “ice” any time from when Biblical Hebrew was natively spoken (i.e. before the Babylonian exile)? Ice is water.
קָ֑רַח is ice. ‎מָּֽיִם , used 583 times, never refers to ice. When snow melts, it becomes maim (Job 24:19).
maim denotes instability and weakness (Gen 49:4; Josh 7:5; Ps 22:14; Ezek 7:17; 21:7)
The word קרח for “cold” is found only six times in Tanakh, four of those refers to cold in general, only twice possibly for “ice”, neither of which clearly referring to solid ice.

Here was an entry I hadn’t previously looked at in detail, rather just took the meaning as given in dictionaries. Looking at its uses in context caused me to update my dictionary.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:v2 says "darkness was on the face of the deep". But if light did not exist yet, darkness was everywhere. Not just on the surface of the earth which was covered with water. If I say, My house was dark, that implies that other houses were not dark.
That implication is a logical fallacy. Usually when “My house was dark” the whole neighborhood, if not the whole town, was also dark (power failure).
The author is omniscient. If I am flying in a helicopter over Detroit, and I report back, everything south of 8 Mile Road is dark, that implies that north of 8 Mile Road there is some light.
Not necessarily. It’s just as likely that you haven’t looked north of 8 Mile Road yet.
SteveMiller wrote:Just the statement that it is dark south of 8 Mile road does not imply that north of 8 Mile has light. But coming from a source that can see the whole situation, it does.
There could be other reasons not to mention that it’s dark north of 8 Mile Road too.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:In the six days in Gen 1, God did nothing in the night. The repeated formula is: There was morning, and then God worked, and then there was evening, and then there was the morning of the next day. Would God create the heavens and the earth in the dark?
Why not? There was no light yet, and light needs matter in order to exist. God created the matter that could produce light.
Doesn't matter also need energy to exist? The electrons are rotating around the nucleus.
Really? Has that been observed?

The idea that atoms are made up of nuclei surrounded by electrons is merely a mathematical model, that atoms act “as if” they have that form. That doesn’t mean that atoms have that form, just that they act that way. I was warned by people in physics not to take those mathematical descriptions of action to be descriptions of form.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
A fairly decent description of them is found in http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Mokele_mbembe
Thanks Karl. There does seem to be some kind of big creature there. Too bad there are no pictures of it. The footprints may be fake, as the creature is supposed to be about 2/3 the size of an elephant, but the footprints are up to 3 feet diameter, about 50% bigger than an elephant's. The creature spends most of its time under water. If it can breathe under water, it is not a dinosaur. There are lots of under water creatures that have not been discovered.
There are many air breathing creatures that spend most of their time under water, coming up only occasionally for air.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:I think dinosaur remains are evidence of a previous creation on this earth between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. If dinosaurs were part of this creation, then God would have saved 2 of each kind on the ark, and there would still be some of most of the kinds of dinosaurs around today.
Not necessarily, seeing as how humans have been so destructive of God’s creation. Especially when dealing with animals that are dangerous to humans and/or destructive of human possessions.
How many species have gone extinct due to humans or from other causes? Mammoths and Mastodons, which are basically elephants. Sea Cows. Flightless birds - which are flying birds that lost their ability to fly after adapting to an island that has no land animals.
Could humans have caused all 700 species of dinosaurs to be officially extinct?
700 species??? You need to take that number with a big grain of salt. The modern word “species” is often defined differently depending on which biologist you speak to. What one biologist will call as two species, another will claim are merely two variations within one species.

As for “officially extinct”, observations by natives and “non-scientists” show that that’s a meaningless term. It’s applied to creatures that aren’t really extinct.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:I do not know of any verifiable evidence of humans existing at the same time as dinos.
Again that word “verifiable”, what do you mean by that? Seen by those who are trying not to see? Who try to hide any reports of sightings? Who call any such reports “hoaxes” if they become known? In short, people who put greater trust in fallen human intellect than on the Word of God.

What about descriptions in old literature and historical sources? What about surviving artwork? What about modern native reports? Don’t those count?
Verifiable would be a picture or a fossil record of humans with dinos.
You want pictures? Let’s start with the Narmer palette. What are those long-necked creatures pictured there? What about the Ica Stones (so quickly called “hoaxes” today) that were made before the Spanish arrived in Peru? There are more in different places. See also http://www.s8int.com
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:Either dinosaurs were part of this creation or they were part of a previous creation on this earth.
If they were part of this creation then God saved 2 of each kind on the ark and some of most of the kinds should still be around today.
If they were part of a previous creation it would have to be in between Gen 1:1 and 1:2.
What evidence is there that there was a previous creation? Linguistically, I see none. This is a question of Biblical Hebrew.
I don't read the Biblical text in a vacuum. It's ok to compare it to facts.
I'm just saying here that your position demands that dinosaurs still exist today.
According to reports from rather remote areas, many do still exist today.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: The behemoth in Job 40:15-24 is not a dinosaur.
It is a mammal because it has a naval v16
I think it is one of the Sirenia species: manatee, dugong or listed-as-extinct sea cow.
Ancient art show that sauropods gave birth to live young, they would have navels.
Here is a respected YEC (young earth creationist) site that has studied dinos a lot. They say dinos laid eggs. If any gave birth to live young, they did so by laying the eggs inside themselves and hatching them inside. So no navel.
https://creation.com/did-all-dinosaurs-lay-eggs
Notice, in this article, that is speculation concerning dinosaurs, not observation. Just as there’s a mammal that lays eggs, so why not one type of dinosaur giving live birth and suckling its young? Just as ancient art works picture it?

You are really hung up on dinosaurs and their non-existence today despite numerous evidences from history, art and reports that they still exist, that you are willing to use that to inform you what Biblical Hebrew means. I on the other hand have been around scientists all my life, have seen a lot of scientific fraud (a good example is Charles Darwin), have seen PhDs in “science” carefully explain the scientific method I described earlier, then not follow it, and so forth: I’n not impressed by PhD degrees nor do I hold persons in awe (awe is reserved for God anyways) that I’m willing to evaluate what people say, and evaluate what is said. I’ve also studied logic and recognize that logic fallacies are merely high-fallutin’ gibberish, yet see logic fallacies often fooling people (one of my sons once brought home an article from school science class in which a “scientist” pushed eight points—each was based on a logic fallacy. Some of Sam Harris’ writings are so full of logic fallacies that I was surprised when I learned he has a PhD.) People living in remote areas report that they have seen things in their neighborhood, why not listen to them? To give one example, when Europeans first saw fresh dinosaur tracks in Africa in the 1700s, at a time when no one in Europe knew what a dinosaur track looks like, what’s the probability that that was a fake? Though there are fake Ika stones being made today to sell to tourists, what about the genuine ones that were known to the Spaniards as early as the 1500s, that accurately picture features of dinosaurs that were not known to scientists even as late as the 1990s?

To sum up that paragraph, there’s nothing from science, history and linguistics that indicate that Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 were separated in time by a gap.

Karl W. Randolph.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 11:20 am
by kwrandolph
You want pictures? I forgot about this site, it has many pictures.

http://www.omniology.com/OMNIOLOGY-Content.html

How many of the animals listed in Tanakh as “unclean” were dinosaurs? In my dictionary I list some animals that could be dinosaurs, are my listings correct? I don’t start with the presupposition that dinosaurs are extinct, or if extinct, only within the last millennium or two. I therefore let the evidence inform my understanding of some Hebrew words.

Karl W. Randolph.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2017 7:47 pm
by SteveMiller
Karl,
Thanks for the stimulating discussion.
I'll just agree to disagree.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:36 pm
by Jason Hare
Unless I'm doing a public reading of the text, I read Genesis 1:1 as follows:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בְּרֹ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

This has בְּרֹא bərōʾ (an infinitive construct) instead of the Masoretic בָּרָא bārāʾ (3ms perfect).

This is how Rashi suggested to read the text. Why? The word brēʾšîṯ appears 51 times in the Bible (Blue Letter Bible). It nearly always means "the first part of something," that is, the best or choicest part. Since the word appears in the construct again and again, we expect to read it here as a construct, too. If we turn ברא into an infinitive construct, it changes the basic approach to the text.

I read it thus: In the beginning of the creating of God (that is, in the beginning of God's creating...) the heavens and the earth (the thing being created)...

This places the first two verses as background. God comes to what would become the heavens and earth and finds it a chaotic mass of water. There is darkness and a powerful wind blowing over the surface of a great abyss. God comes to this chaos and the first thing he says is יהי אור. Until that point, there hasn't been a creative act that has taken place. The earth existed as a huge mass of water and chaos, and God came to it in order to overcome the chaos and to induce order in the universe.

That is, the entirety of the creation is the imposition of order upon chaos. It is not creatio ex nihilo in the Genesis narrative. That's how I read it, as not telling us where the matter of the universe came from in the same way that the text doesn't tell us where God came from.

That's my two cents.

Jason

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:39 pm
by Jason Hare
kwrandolph wrote:How many of the animals listed in Tanakh as “unclean” were dinosaurs?
Not a question that I ever expected to read. ;)

I don't think the authors of the Bible had any conception of dinosaurs, and I doubt they would have included them in their telling of the tales they had inherited from their tribal past.

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 9:15 pm
by SteveMiller
Jason,
What do you do about v2 starting with "and"?

Re: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 9:50 pm
by Jason Hare
SteveMiller wrote:Jason,
What do you do about v2 starting with "and"?
It's not uncommon for subordinate (or other) clauses to begin with the vav conjunction. This happens after כי most frequently, thought it also occurs with other particles. I would simply not translate it or use it as the mark of an independent background detail and translate it as "now" or something similar.

When God began creating the heavens and the earth -- now, the earth was chaos and void, darkness upon the face of tehom and a divine wind swirling upon the surface of the water -- God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

We should take the "and" in verse 3 as a simple vav-conversive, by which the narrative is carried forward (or, in the case, started). It should probably be left untranslated altogether, just as we should leave most of the vavs untranslated in the series of events.

Hebrew doesn't infrequently use connectors in ways that we wouldn't expect in English. For example, what is the purpose of אשר in the following verse?

Jeremiah 49:34
אֲשֶׁ֨ר הָיָ֧ה דְבַר־יהו֛ה אֶל־יִרְמְיָ֥הוּ הַנָּבִ֖יא אֶל־עֵילָ֑ם בְּרֵאשִׁ֗ית מַלְכ֛וּת צִדְקִיָּ֥ה מֶֽלֶךְ־יְהוּדָ֖ה לֵאמֹֽר׃

Genesis 3:5
כִּ֚י יֹדֵ֣עַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים כִּ֗י בְּיוֹם֙ אֲכָלְכֶ֣ם מִמֶּ֔נּוּ וְנִפְקְח֖וּ עֵֽינֵיכֶ֑ם וִֽהְיִיתֶם֙ כֵּֽאלֹהִ֔ים יֹֽדְעֵ֖י ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע׃

Leviticus 26:26
בְּשִׁבְרִ֣י לָכֶם֮ מַטֵּה־לֶחֶם֒ וְ֠אָפוּ עֶ֣שֶׂר נָשִׁ֤ים לַחְמְכֶם֙ בְּתַנּ֣וּר אֶחָ֔ד וְהֵשִׁ֥יבוּ לַחְמְכֶ֖ם בַּמִּשְׁקָ֑ל וַֽאֲכַלְתֶּ֖ם וְלֹ֥א תִשְׂבָּֽעוּ׃

Notice that the Leviticus verse uses an infinitive construct and then has a vav in the subsequent clause ("when I break... and ten women will bake..."). The vav there must be left untranslated. It's the exact same thing in Genesis 1.

Regards,
Jason