The Materialistic Worldview
(If any of you do not have access to Facebook or this isn’t public, let me know and I’ll paste the text. It’s not too long.)
Maybe I should have specified rhetorical questions denoting irony. Another inference problem.
Young’s Literal Translation:
" 1 In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — 2 the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,
I doubt that anyone except a few creationists believes that exegesis is credible. I doubt the Hebrews even had a concept of “atmosphere” or of the air as material, especially one that might change from opaque to translucent to transparent. Nor is there anything in science that entails such a transformation on earth. What you “explained” can’t be supported by the text.
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Note: nothing at all about the sun, stars, etc.
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It doesn’t really matter what the Hebrews had a concept of, because the original Author was not Hebrew. I know your dogma precludes that idea, and that the ANE literature view of Genesis 1 (also a Christian view) would be more to your liking. Actually, I think Genesis 1 is a miraculous piece of literature and that both the sequential view and the ANE literature view are both concurrently and separately true and nonconflicting, analogous to the two women in this classic drawing:
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How do you know that? And what is “ANE”?
I have to ask again if English is your first language.
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So you are suggesting that Genesis 1 is an optical illusion?
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It’s glossing over the whole point of science, which is to take what you think might be a fit and use it to predict a direct observation that neither you nor anyone else has made yet.
You’re supposed to bake in all of the interpretation ahead of time, because human nature is to make snap decisions and manufacture fits.
Except that it doesn’t match. The extent of the matching depends on the distance of the sun and moon from the earth, and is different for every solar eclipse.
I don’t think that’s literally literal, Dale. Hebrew has very different grammar.
The capital ‘A’ on Author was another inference you failed to make, and it denotes that the original Author is the Creator of the universe.
‘ANE literature’ is something you can find reference to on the internet 
, and you will discover that the ‘ANE’ stands for ‘Ancient Near East(ern)’.
I have edited my omission, and it now reads “Actually, I think Genesis 1 is a miraculous piece of literature and that both the sequential view and the ANE literature view are both concurrently and separately true and nonconflicting…”
And I don’t need to ask whether or not you are routinely gracious.
(I probably shouldn’t be answering this, because the question is obviously disingenuous , but…) You may have overlooked the implications of the word ‘analogous’.
No, I got that. I’m asking how you know the author is God.
Thanks. But you don’t have to be such a dick when you tell me. So what you were saying that Genesis is a piece of ANE literature? And I assume you are confirming that English is your first language; in that case, I encourage you to read over your posts at least once before hitting send.
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That is the name of the translation, and it’s fairly literal. I’m sure the author was aware of Hebrew grammar pretty well. You may critique its accuracy at your leisure. It’s been around a while, but it and its associated references are still in common use.
I included this link above, Genesis 1 YLT, and if you click/tap on the INT (that stands for ‘interlinear’) in the bottom line in the header, you can see the Hebrew words parallel to an English translation (I forget which one).
Your question/implication was not specific enough, and this time, I failed to infer that you ‘got that’. (I didn’t know what you did or did not know.)
(I’m not routinely gracious, either, like I’d like to be, within limits, but my ANE reply was preceded by “I have to ask again if English is your first language.” And I’m being a what?
Yes, by doing so one can see that it the YLT is definitely not literal, nor really even parallel.
Close enough for most practical purposes.
You owe me a new irony meter.
I don’t think “Young’s kind-of literal translation, close enough for most practical purposes” would sell very well.
So are you saying that faking literalism is a practical purpose? I mean, if you’re going to claim that you take the Bible literally, I don’t see how “close enough” is good enough if literalism is really the way to go.
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Yes and no, and then also more. Yes and no because actually it is quite different than other ANE writings in certain respects, but similar in others in that it addresses ANE cosmology and motifs. The Christian ANE scholars that I am aware of deny the sequential nature of Genesis 1, even though it counts from 1 to 6, and say that you have to have esoteric ANE scholarship about ANE literature, including poetry, and there are literary circles in Genesis 1 and that there is no linear sequence. As you know from above, and whether or not you think I am distorting the “plain reading” – for instance, regarding the grammatical and logical sequences regarding day 4, as I have laid out – I believe there is an acurate portrayal of the cosmological and planetary sequence.