I’m too honest to make it in politics. Both sides would hate me.
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I suggest you read it again. And then read the entire Strong’s concordance entry. Better yet, consult a standard LEXICON. I suggest DBAG. (Fred Danker was a good friend and a special sort of guy.)
I’m curious, are you an old earth creationist, or an “evolutionary creationist”, or what?
I fail to understand why you’re saying this. The Strong’s entry I just showed you confirmed that the word Kosmos is by no means limited to a “world of people” sort of meaning. It depends upon context.
Yes. I do believe you are being honest, just as you said.
Good. But is it honest for you to deliberately ignore my questions?
I will leave it to readers to determine who is dodging the Biblical texts and the questions. I want to keep the peaceful in Peaceful Science.
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I think what @AllenWitmerMiller shows is that the local flood interpretation is not ruled out by 2 Peter 3 due to Peter’s use of ge and kosmos. From the text, it seems very possible that when Peter thought of Noah’s Flood when writing that text, he was primarily thinking of it as an event which destroyed the world of people. That’s what’s relevant to his main point in this passage anyway - people in Noah’s time scoffed when he was building the Ark, because they didn’t believe that God would judge them. Similarly, some people today do not believe that Jesus will return again one day and judge them.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily rule out the global flood interpretation either, because a global flood would destroy both the world of people and the physical earth. Rather, this text by itself underdetermines the matter. And that’s a really good example of how some details of stories in the Bible are neither revealed to us nor required for understanding the story’s teaching.
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If it isn’t ruled out, it’s certainly made dubious because Peter is clearly comparing God’s judgment in the Flood to his upcoming judgment of the whole universe by fire. Now if the flood were only limited and local, then that comparison makes little sense. He might has well have chosen a different example like when God judged Sodom and Gomorrah.
However, as I pointed out back in our previous discussion, the text of Genesis 6 (to which Peter is clearly referring here) absolutely does rule out a limited interpretation.
The Strong’s entry doesn’t support your interpretation.
W.r.t to the specific verse you cited, it gives the below interpretation:
2 Peter 3:6; the earth with its inhabitants:
And another reference in 2Peter 2:5 as referring to the people of the world.
of the antediluvians, 2 Peter 2:5;
It seems that @AllenWitmerMiller has a fair point that the emphasis in this case is on the “world” of people. This also makes sense because of the fact that the world in the physical sense did not get destroyed in the flood… we are still living in it. Whereas, the final judgement will involve the world being replaced by a new earth.
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You don’t seem to recognize that this is not the usage Miller is arguing for here. He is saying it only refers to one specific subset of Earth’s inhabitants: people. And not the Earth itself at all.
The whole world and the “world of people” just so happen to be the same thing. You can’t destroy all people without destroying the whole world.
This is incorrect. The world as it existed at that time was indeed destroyed. The earth’s surface features were totally remade by the Flood, such that the planet would have been completely unrecognizable to Noah afterwards. As much as any flood can destroy any physical terrain, Noah’s Flood did it.
Yes. I have covered 2 Peter 3 so many times on Peaceful Science over the past two years. So now I just summarize the basic lexicography and exegesis—and leave it at that. Moreover, I have learned from experience that (1) those who are ideologically committed to a favored tradition simply don’t care about exegesis, and (2) most people don’t have sufficient experience in phenomena like Semitic influences on the Koine Greek of the New Testament to follow those arguments, and (3) reproducing exhaustive concordances to establish the lexicographical distinctions leaves readers exhausted and the traditionalist complaining of “elephant hurling.” In these conditions all you can do is provide general guidance for other third-party readers.
Of course, a half century ago I myself was a very similar kind of tradition-defending global-flood advocate. It took a lot of years of study to develop the skills and experience in the languages and the Bible (and perhaps, more importantly in translation issues) to become confident on these types of topics. And contrary to what the major YEC ministries claim, it was not “trying to get the approval of the scientists” or “accommodating evolutionary philosophy” which led me out of my “creation science” background. It was my study of the Biblical text itself. I didn’t really grapple with the science until years later. (During my academy years, I really didn’t have much time for studying anything that was outside my scholarly track in linguistics.)
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Wrong and wrong. Yet again, please read more carefully. (1) I have explained to you multiple times that ERETZ in Genesis the LAND or COUNTRY, not “planet earth”. (2) And obviously, a flood gets the ground wet—so of course it involves that ERETZ/land/country and HAADAMAH. (3) I said the Noahic Flood was an ADAMIC judgment—destroying the descendants of Adam with the exception of Noah’s family. That’s what the text tells us. I care about what the text states. Sometimes I have speculated on others (those outside the Adamic line) but I don’t recall addressing any of those topics in this thread.
A flood which could destroy a people without involving surface of the planet would be an amazing phenomenon indeed.
Hugh Ross certainly emphasizes that fact. In denying a global flood, he says, “Noah’s flood was certainly world-wide but not global.” The only WORLD Noah knew was destroyed.
Of course, if you are actually trying to say the whole planet earth and the world of people “just so happen to be the same thing”, I am amazed. (I will leave it to readers to judge this one.)
Of course, 2 Peter 3 reinforces that point in applying KOSMOS to the Noahic Flood but GE to the future judgment by fire. PDPrice continues to dodge my requests that he explain why different words are used. (Instead of just a quick copy-and-paste of a small part of the Strong’s entry from the late 1800’s, I would to see him consult the Danker edition of the A&G translation of the Bauer Lexicon.
Wow. Incredible. I am nearly speechless.
Moreover, I don’t believe that the omnipotence of God is that limited.
If you are implying planet earth’s surface features were totally remade, what is your evidence? How about you cite the scriptural evidence and the geological evidence?
Speaking of changes in the planet in the context of Noah is extremely anachronistic. Nothing described in the text requires that Noah observed anything beyond the scope of the fairly limited world known to him. I have no problem with traditionalists choosing to believe that Noah’s flood was global—but don’t invent things which simply are NOT within the Biblical text. That is adding to scripture.
So are you claiming that the Bible tells you (by implication) that the terrain of Antarctica was totally changed?
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Yet everywhere we look we find physical features which have been totally untouched by this terrain destroying Flood. Places like the Green River Formation with a record of over 6 million continuous yearly varves and its exquisitely preserved delicate fossil life known as lagerstatten.
Interesting how the physical evidence keeps contradicting PDPrice’s claims. I’m sure there’s a good reason. 
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I have discussed this subject with @AllenWitmerMiller before. This is not what he is saying. He has clarified below. But I will repeat anyway.
He acknowledges that-
- The flood was was a judgement upon all descendants of Adam.
- He is pointing out that the extent of the flood only needs to be large enough to effect the places where said descendants of Adam lived.
This is completely in line with Genesis 6.
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And despite the claims the major YEC ministries that Noah’s flood is responsible for the vast majority of the world’s fossils and almost all sedimentary rock layers, they rarely dare to attempt an explanation of the 15,000 alternating sandstone and shale layers of the Haymond Formation, each with its own independent networks of animal burrows and tunnels. (Somehow that destructive flood allowed the fleeing animals to build homes in those 15,000 layers, all in the year-long deluge of Noah.)
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I’d repost those photos of the 300’ wall of vertical dinosaur tracks but I don’t want to give someone another fainting spell. 
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Extremely wrong! Eretz in Genesis is part of the Hebrew merism “Heaven and earth”, which encompasses everything. Obviously the author’s intent was to signfy God’s creation of the whole earth, not just some indeterminate piece of land.
I don’t believe you do. I don’t think you take the text seriously at all. If you did, you would know that God said he determined to make an end of all flesh, not just Adam’s descendants. And you would also know that the floodwaters actually subsided at the end of the Flood, rather than remaining permanently flooded as you have suggested.
Oh boy, turns out you believe in non-Adamic people as well? But you “care about the text”.
Yes, much like a flood that could destroy all the descendants of Adam without covering the globe, despite happening nearly 1700 years after Creation.
There’s a good reason that CMI spends a lot of time dealing with the false teachings promulgated by Ross.
Is it really amazing? How long do you imagine it would take people to migrate all over the globe? Apparently much more than 1700 years?
Apparently biblical authors are forbidden to use synonyms? Much ado about nothing.
To know, I would need to enter the mind of Peter himself. The scope of meaning encompassed by these words is overlapping. You are trying to pretend they’re mutually exclusive concepts.
But not quite!
So you’re suggesting an extra-biblical miracle. Namely, that god miraculously caused a local flood to kill all the human inhabitants of the globe.
Already have, and you’ve ignored it.
Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth. It’s a Buddy Davis song.
Sure, I can say: “The features Noah would have known before the Flood would have been erased.”
Yeah, you can certainly draw that conclusion from what the Bible tells us. You cannot flood the entire surface of the planet without radically altering the terrain on said planet.
And that also explains why there is zero evidence of a global flood!
Indeed, it is interesting that Bible-affirming Christian geologists of past centuries earnestly set out to confirm the popular global flood (and young earth) tradition—but they changed their minds once they saw what God had actually revealed in his creation. And in the process they helped created the modern science of geology. (It is always gives me a chuckle when Kent Hovind, Ray Comfort, et al claim that those geologists who predated Darwin’s research were intent on promoting “godless evolution theory!”)
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Science relies on hundreds of years of geologic and paleontological evidence collected by science professionals all over the planet.
YECs rely on the lyrics of a children’s song.
Tells you all you need to know about who is really interested in the truth.
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