This is a book I am working on, here is some of it free here. I haven't got a publisher yet.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN: GENESIS
By
Christine Erikson
© Christine Erikson AD 2015
Preface including remarks on Creationism and Evolution
Velikovsky sort of pioneered this effort, but mostly should be ignored his entire catastrophic theory was at least partly designed to try to account for ancient cataclysms and keep God out of it. A ridiculous effort is made by him to eradicate the Ten Commandements, as merely something hysterical people misinterpreted the groanings of a volcano as saying. Given how much verbiage was involved, this is impossible.
Why should we assume the Bible is correct? why not just a mishmash of stuff that was snagged from Mesopotamian and maybe Egyptian influences and cobbled together in the time of Ezra perhaps?
I won’t deal with the issue of possible formalization and finalization under Ezra, because it is irrelevant. Ezra was totally devoted to God and likely acquainted with Daniel who risked his life rather than follow the anti YHWH orders of Nebuchadnezzar. There is no way that Ezra would have edited things to include anything pagan, that is, not Yahwehist, not validated by existing documents he had, or that was inaccurate. In Exodus 17:14 God told Moses to "Write this for a memorial in a book" regarding the defeat of Amalek, so some recording of events was going on in addition to a likely separate Torah and it may be that Ezra edited these into one book. The reference to about 600,000 men besides children and the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt does not mention women, so they are probably in the original statement. Some editing may have occurred on that one. A precedent for this exists:
Both LXX and KJV (Masoretic) give the same phrasing. In Genesis chapter 36, in both LXX and Masoretic, we find that v. 2 says Esau's wives include "Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite;" and verse 14 again affirms this matrilineal listing and that Anah is a woman, the daughter of Zibeon. But later when "dukes" or chiefs of Edom are listed, Anah is referred to as male but the dukes include Anah, Aholibamah, and Timnah, who may or may not be the same as Timna. Looks like someone figured the original record showing female chiefs had to be wrong, and miscorrected the record at that point.
Some note that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, because it refers to him in the third person and ends with a discussion of his death. That is irrelevant. The important thing is that what is in it is historically accurate, that it contains the specific revelations and rules given to Moses by God, and whatever prior records Moses had access to. In the records of the kings of Israel and Judah there is a reference to a king not killing the family of a miscreant he executed, because of the Law from YHWH which said that children (incl. semi adult and adult, "children" as descendants in general) should not be put to death for the sins of the fathers but each die for his own sin. This is in the Torah or Pentateuch itself, and shows that this was known in preexilic times, and was not a product of some mythologizer trying to create a national identity for some thumb sucking knuckle dragging nomads who happened to get dragged out of the desert (which Israel/Canaan/Palestine wasn’t in those days) to another desert (which Mesopotamia wasn’t in those days either).
Talmud deviation from Torah: an example
This is also an example of the issue of unjust judges mentioned in the Prophets, and when Jesus spoke of using traditions of men to flaut the Law or Tradition of God. Because this law about not dying for the sins of the children was lifted out of context in the Talmud, and used to forbid testimony by sons or daughters against parents. That way one would not die because of his children. This is totally false, an example of the Talmud violating the Torah sometimes, because the context of the statement is cleary about forbidding collective punishment of families merely because of relatedness to an evil doer, as distinct from the issue of being part of the conspiracy to do whatever wickedness. That this is the meaning it held in those days for centuries is shown by its application when the king's son killed only those who murdered his father, and not the rest of the family because that law forbade this measure. ( which was a feature of Chinese law at one point, for instance.)
Another likely case is the interpretation of Deuteronomy rgarding rape to solve the problem by the victim marrying the rapist (more like he was bound to marry her and never divorce her not vice versa). The words for lay hold on and sieze are totally different, not even the same root, per Strong's regarding the forcibly raped betrothed virgin and the unbetrothed virgin. And in the latter case, "they are found" exact same phrase as about the mutually willing adulterous pair. This was not about rape at all. And since the betrothed virgin is called a man's wife or a man's woman more precisely, so is as good as a wife and if she was willing adultery was an issue, but she is compared to the victim of murder, not of theft of someone's things he is transporting, it is not a property crime against her man, but against her person. This puts the death penalty on the table for rape of anyone regardless of their status.
Another deviation is divorce. Judaism doesn't allow a woman to initiate divorce, she has to persuade a rabbinic court to order her husband to divorce her. But that isn't how it is phrased in the Torah, in Exodus it says that a concubine (so also a wife or higher status partner) can leave her man without paying money, if he shorts her food, clothing or sexual attention for the sake of another woman. Clearly the initiative is with her and no reference to getting third parties in to order him to free her.
One of the most serious deviation of Talmud from Torah, is when it says that any public denial of Judaism or of God is not allowed, but private is. That is not the attitude shown by prophets and martyrs of the Old Testament. The logic probably is about causing others to follow in apostasy when it is public and the context is coercion. But private apostasy will also be encouraged by this and proliferate. If some mode of even tying a shoelace is used as a Jewish identifier one must not change it even under threat of death, but a private denial by action is allowed. This is absurd. whatis done in private will proliferate privately among those who know, and be broadcast as a victory by heathen persecutors of Jews, so how is this preventing social corruption? only slows it and this judgement having been given it wouldn't even likely do that.
In general, archaeology supports the Bible where it touches on its statements at all. This is more common in the times of the Kings, but a few things in Egypt support Joseph and Moses.
(A very good case is made online that Amenemhet IV was the Pharoah of the Exodus, his mummy has never been found, consistent with the Bible that Pharoah AND his horses and chariots were overthrown in the sea. This would be consistent, an end of 12th Dynasty Egypt date for the Exodus, with the chronology you get when you count backwards from Cyrus the Great.)
There is some conflict occasionally, very minor, between Assyrian records and those of Kings and Chronicles, not enough to be worth worrying about. In general, where there is a conflict between pagan records and the Bible, it is better to trust the Bible. Of course there is the theological reason, but there is another one.
psychological realism as opposed to reasons pagans wrote history
The Bible tells its protagonists’ history warts and all. Pagan kings wrote to impress people with their glory and wonderfulness, and who knows what internal intrigues made propaganda purpose twists on timing details a good idea to them? One Assyrian king was murdered by his relatives, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. So there is a psychological realism reason to trust The Bible: It doesn’t write to the glory of kings or people, but solely to the glory of God.
This is not going to stay strictly in Genesis, because there are things in Genesis which explain things in other books, Old Testament (hereafter OT) and New Testament (hereafter NT), or which are the basis for points in them.
The Bible is not longwinded. This is partly because the space available to write on was more limited. But even when you compare Genesis and other Bible books with concurrent pagan writings, there is still a stark sanity and a perfect use of space. God packs a lot of information into a few words. Anything humans can do, God can do better.
A note on Bible versions
KJBO or King James BIBLE Only is the notion that the King James Translation was itself divinely inspired, and that there is no need to reference Greek or Hebrew or learn these, because God corrected any errors in the Greek and Hebrew texts through the translators, so this is THE words of God. That includes choice of phrasing and punctuation. Gack. Someone swallowed a camel there. So KJVO King James VERSION Only may refer to this or to considering KJV the best, but not the only possible, English translation. KJBO is the "King James is not a version but THE BIBLE as it is supposed to be written" sort of thing. This is not merely KJV is the best around, but that it is not a version but the divinely translated King James Bible the only legitimate version that is the actual words of God, because God directed the translation. This is totally false to judge by the writings of the translators on the matter, who fully expected a better translation to be done later and who had kind words about the Septuagint, which KJBO people mock. Ruckmanism is another term for them after their founder Ruckman.
By the way, if you are reading a Scofield Reference Bible that isn’t the earliest version, even though it claims to be the KJV it imported translations from RSV, NASB and NIV.
"While Scofield revised his notes in the 1917 edition, he did not change the KJV text. But the 1967 NSRB changes the KJV with alleged "better readings" in over 6,500 places. In many places, the NSRB agrees with the readings of modern translations rather than the KJV. For example, "a son of the gods" appears in Daniel 3:25, rather than "the Son of God" (KJV).
"…Philippians alone revealed a total of 29 changes from the King James Bible. Of these, twenty-one (72%) were traced to either the RSV or the NASB. The skeptic can check it out for himself: Philippians 1:7, 8, 23, 27; 2:1, 15, 25, 27, 28; 3:1, 8, 17, 19, 20, 21; 4:3, 6, 14, 15, 21-22."14 The most recent edition of Scofield’s Bible (1984) is based on the 1967 edition, with most changes stemming from the adaptation of all notes to the New International Version…."http://www.chapellibrary.org/files/9413/9844/3837/ceot.pdf A Candid Examination of the Scofield Bible.
Creationism and Orthodoxy
The Creationists often claim a thick atmospheric canopy before the Flood which I don’t think is necessary and are somewhat contadicted by things in Genesis.
An Eastern Orthodox critic of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s Creationism complained that his writings on this sound like Protestant defenders of Creationism, but they are the only ones to have done the extensive scientific analysis of evolution, so who else are you going to draw on in making arguments? That St. Basil the Great disliked atom theory, thinking wrongly that it involved anarchy, or that he believed in the four humors or four elements theory doesn’t invalidate the Church Fathers’ Creationist stance, because none of these things are dealt with in Scripture anyway. Fr. Seraphim Rose, a priestmonk of the Eastern Orthodox Church, observed in a lecture that "Orthodoxy carefully distinguishes the truths which are of faith -- the dogmas – from those which are outward and are open to various interpretations and speculations."
A quick check on the early fathers, quoted in Fr. Seraphim Rose's Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, shows they did indeed treat the Genesis creation account as literally six days, and that thinking otherwise was inconsistent with Christianity.
the earth was divided - the word is eretz, land. not mankind was divided, not languages divided but the land was divided. maybe this might mean assignment of living locations, but scattered abroad and driven by language confusion doesn't soiund that orderly. it might not be certain, but it is consistent with the idea of a catastrophic physical division of the continents that so oddly fit to each other. Gen. 10:25 apparently peleg means earthquake from palag to divide. http://www.biblehub.com strong's links.
Genesis appears to have two contrasting creation accounts. First the seven days, then in chapter two, the plants and animals aren't ready yet, and man is almost made first of all. This contrast is of course treated as from different traditions by
the JPED Higher Criticism crew, whose position has been ably
refuted several times.
e.g.., http://www.ukapologetics.net/docu.htm
This apparent contradiction might be a signal that this is a partial allegory, and you have to read it as if actual fact in order to learn from it what you need to learn, but the real history of
creation is chapter one.
My theory (and maybe someone else thought this also if so
someone tell me) is this: Both are factually correct, there is
no conflict. After creating everything incl. man as per Genesis
1, it being partly telescoped, God took Adam to Eden or created
him there, but in a barren place with seeds in the ground but
no regular watering but mist and not growing much, and God
proceeded to do a mini-recreation in effect in front of Adam, to
show Adam Who God is, and how to keep a garden and would have made things grow fast so Adam saw all the stages, and created more animals duplicates of the first pairs, and thus showed Adam that YHWH is creator. (I am not one of the Hebrew roots crowd, but I think retention of God's Name is important.)
Creationism is either taken for granted by less "educated"
Orthodox Christians, or shrugged off in favor of evolutionism by the more modern inclined. The latter (incl. in a hilarious short bit about Father Cherubim Thorn, a takeoff on Fr. Seraphim Rose and his followers which the writer thought a bit cultish) dismiss creationism as "protestant" (everything we don't like is "protestant") and complain that the materials defending it are all protestant products.
well, that's not quite correct. Evolution of some sort was held
to by pagan thinkers in the days of the great writers of the
Church, the Cappadocian Fathers and St. Basil the Great and
St. John of Damascus. These men were creationists. They didn't
have radiometric flaws and dino bones (aka dragons in the old
days) to argue about, but that was their take: you accept 6
literal days of creation or you aren't much of a Christian if
at all.
In modern times, the defenders of creationism are mostly
protestant, they are the ones who did the groundbreaking work
against the Darwinian revival of ancient evolutionism (which,
given the subtitle of Darwin's book about the superiority of
some races is racist motivated). So you can expect the
literature to be of protestant provenance.
Does that invalidate it? the writer might consider
that the Transformation of the Bread and Wine into the real
but disguised or invisibly present Body and Blood of Christ is
a pagan notion snuck into Christianity by way of Constantine
(total falsehood, he did nothing but ask the Church to settle
the Orthodox vs. Arian dispute) but they never discuss this in
any of their creation science materials. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5V75_F8ZWRxjjJII1nwtkQ
is a good source if you prefer videos.
"Chapter 2. Concerning the creation.
Since, then, God, Who is good and more than good, did not find satisfaction in self-contemplation, but in His exceeding goodness wished certain things to come into existence which would enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness, He brought all things out of nothing into being and created them, both what is invisible and what is visible. Yea, even man, who is a compound of the visible and the invisible. And it is by thought that He creates, and thought is the basis of the work, the Word filling it and the Spirit perfecting it. " http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33042.htm St. John of Damascus
An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
"Chapter 5. Concerning the visible creation.
Our God Himself, Whom we glorify as Three in One, created the heaven and the earth and all that they contain , and brought all things out of nothing into being: some He made out of no pre-existing basis of matter, such as heaven, earth, air, fire, water: and the rest out of these elements that He had created, such as living creatures, plants, seeds. For these are made up of earth, and water, and air, and fire, at the bidding of the Creator." ibid.
Notice creation ex nihilo as westerners would say, out of nothing. St. John of Damascus or John Damascene.
"on the one hand man's body He formed of earth, and on the other his reasoning and thinking soul He bestowed upon him by His own inbreathing, and this is what we mean by after His image. For the phrase after His image clearly refers to the side of his nature which consists of mind and free will, whereas after His likeness means likeness in virtue so far as that is possible.
"Further, body and soul were formed at one and the same time , not first the one and then the other, as Origen so senselessly supposes." ibid. John Damascene.
This is rather odd of St. John to say, because that is EXACTLY
what Genesis shows, first the body formed then the breath of life given Adam, "and he BECAME a living soul." but this was all about the same time, a few seconds or minutes apart and the completion of the body was the creation in it of the soul. So St. John Damascene isn't too outrageously far off.
(Before someone huffs that we should listen to the Fathers that they alone know what Scripture said and meant, St. Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, in his catechetical lectures, told his catechumen to accept nothing that he, a bishop addressing trainees not even fully illuminated i.e., not baptized yet, to accept nothing he told them without checking the Scriptures to be sure it was correct.)
This would seem to support traducianism, but he does not explicitly support this. Tertullian is explicit, in the days before he went with the Montanist heretics. This latter deviation is why, although he is called the father of Latin Christianity, he is not called a church father. some other writers were explicit. Rome after the Great Schism when it left us later rejected traducianism, calling it heresy or something, and opted for "creationism" of the soul and spirit, separate creation of soul and spirit by God for each person at conception or later as some thought ensoulment didn't happen until the child could be felt moving, but that is merely when it is big enough its motions can be felt by its mother.
But St. Paul teaches traducianism, when he says in Hebrews that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedec when Abraham did so, when Levi was still in his loins, and since the lesser pays tithes to the greater, the Melchizedec priesthood of Jesus Christ is greater than the priesthood of Levi and Aaron. Hebrews 7:7-10.
So the Roman spinoff church is wrong on this one. And traducianism is the only way to support inherited warped nature (aka original sin or ancestral sin) unless you argue God, on account of the Fall, makes fallen evil inclined souls and spirits to put into the fallen bodies. One could argue that the fallen bodies infect the new souls and spirits, that are not created fallen. Maybe this argument exists in Aquinas who is a difficult and boring read for his complicated longwindedness. But this is dangerously near to gnostic notions, that the soul and spirit are inherently alien to the body and even
untouched and untouchable by the body.
"it is not true to say either that the soul exists before the body, or that the body exists without the soul, but that there is one beginning of both, which according to the heavenly view was laid as their foundation in the original will of God; according to the other, came into existence on the occasion of generation....
"the seminal cause of our constitution is neither a soul without body, nor a body without soul, but that, from animated and living bodies, it is generated at the first as a living and animate being, and that our humanity takes it and cherishes it like a nursling with the resources she herself possesses, and it thus grows on both sides and makes its growth manifest correspondingly in either part:— " http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2914.htm
On the Making of Man St. Gregory of Nyssa While the image and likeness of God he claims has to do entirely with the soul and mind and rational ability, and distinguishes the vegetative soul that is merely alive in plants and a lesser degree of consciousness in animals. the body he argues has its unique qualities to better express and serve this image and likeness quality, and our lack of strength and tools and weapons compared to animals caused us to work with them, thus the king did not ignore his subjects. Thus, though he doesn't say this exactly, the matter of being in the image and likeness of God is not only a spiritual or mental quality or character traits, virtues and rationality, but also to some extent, in a symbolic or pragmatic way, physical, without that implying physicality to God.
In On Virginity, after waxing MGTOW-ish both from male and female exaggerated perspective, St. Gregory of Nyssa has to recover himself and affirm the goodness of marriage and deprecate its abominators so long as it is engaged in with moderation regarding sex and upholds Isaac's marriage as allegedly when aged and only for reproduction.
Then he misquotes Genesis 4:1, saying "Scripture signifies when it said that he knew her not Genesis 4:1" till he was driven forth from the garden, and till she, for the sin which she was decoyed into committing, was sentenced to the pangs of childbirth."
Scripture does not say this. It merely says that Adam knew his wife and she gave birth and thus the existence the life of that son began at conception. It does not say that this was the first time Adam "knew" (aka had sex with made love to) Eve. It merely starts their sons' histories at conception. Regardless of the possible interpretations of Exodus regarding loss of a pregnancy due to injury, and this an accident, not a deliberate abortion, so if to be punished when accidental how much more so if deliberate, this Exodus rule establishes the embryo/fetus's life is human and of value, and that human life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
"... as the compensation for having to die, marriage was instituted"
nope. This weas instituted in Eden before the Fall, as the second chapter of Genesis makes clear. And elsewhere speculations about no sex because no reproduction needed if no death, and any speculation about non sexual reproduction being possible if the Fall had not happened (don't know who started that one, Augustine I think mentions it) the fact is that male and female and their respective genitive organs were created and they and the animals were told to be fruitful and multiply BEFORE the Fall.
This was not an order to get out there and get pregnant NOW, it was an empowering fiat, granting fertility and desire the function of hormones and so forth, like "let there be light" created light.
this whole line of thought goes back to Irenaeus, but he made clear what was his own speculation and his arguments for it, and did NOT say it was Apostolic tradition, and neither this nor calculations that Jesus was nearly 50 when He began His ministry are supported by any appeal to an Apostle only some dubious calculations from Scripture misunderstood.
Irenaeus argues that the reason they could be naked and not ashamed could only be because they were children (prepubescent not teens) so their kisses would be without desire for such feelings naturally arouse embarassment or shame.
This was projecting backwards to that time before shame, which began with the Fall after eating the forbidden fruit, the shame feelings we have now, and which are not even invariably present anyway. Everything else was brought into existence in its adult state, except the plants Adam needed to see grow in chapter two, why should mankind be any different?
On this supposition was based the idea that Adam and Eve never "went all the way" or anything like it until after the Fall.
but it is BEFORE the Fall that Adam speaks of her being bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh and the narrator adds that for this rerason shall a man leave his father and mother (no you DON'T marry the family just the individual and if the push is on to be otherwise they are wrong) and cleave (cling) to his woman (ishah, translated wife) and the two shall become one flesh.
Referring back to this, St. Paul says in I Cor. 6:16 that sex makes the two automatically one flesh, even when with a prostitute, which is why a man who fornicates sins against his own flesh. This seems to take for granted that they had sex before the Fall.
Trouble is, the ancient world with its loveless arranged marriage sex on the one hand, and its loveless lustful sex on the other and changing partners, mostly wrecked the sense of it as it should be. Romantic type love would be viewed askance as often fickle and usually linked to adultery or fornication of the change your partners fairly often sort. so marriage had to be defended as legitimate.
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