In a universe where God creates free moral agents who, nevertheless, choose to work against their own common interests, yes --God can express regrets, while not thereby totally giving up on us.
Good question.
Maybe think of Adam as kind of like “Hal” in “2001- A Space Odyssey.”
Some will take that as a warrant to believe that we can “kill” God, while nothing could be further from the truth. :o)
Yes. We agree on that.
If I follow what you are saying, it appears that you don’t understand that just because the Noahic pericope speaks of a particular ERETZ (land), that doesn’t mean that no other ERETZ (land) in terms of others areas could possibly exist. God’s revelation in the scriptures, specifically in Genesis in this case, is only concerned with the area of the Noahic flood. God’s revelations in his creation tell us a great deal about what was happening in other areas outside of the land of Noah.
Nothing in the Genesis text precludes the survival of other animals outside of the Noahic flood area. And so much which God has revealed in his creation tells us that there was no planet-wide flood a few thousand years ago. You see, I am prone to recognize and affirm all of God’s revelations while you appear to reject many of them—especially when they happen to pose conflicts with your tradition-based views on a particular interpretation of the Biblical text. I choose to believe ALL that God has revealed to us.
You lost me on that one. I don’t see how @swamidass’ statement could possibly be construed to say that particular English Bible translations couldn’t have been produced by competent Hebrew scholars. It sounds to me like he is simply stating that many Bible readers misunderstand their English Bibles—whether due to changes in language which can sometimes make the KJV Bible more difficult to understand correctly or because some people are prone to casually imposing their tradition-based connotations and experiences on particular words in at least some of the modern English Bible translations they read.
Nevertheless and ultimately, I’ll let Dr. Swamidass clarify whether or not I accurately understood his post.
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First you say the above, then go on to say WHAT? exactly???
Excuse me? Says who? What are you saying other than contradicting your first statement above?
READ THE STORY IN ITS OWN CONTEXT, and don’t overlay, by accident, modern English meanings which don’t pertain to it.
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Amen. Upper-case letters are quite appropriate for emphasizing this maxim. @noUCA, we are all encouraging you to respect the Bible enough to where you are willing to understand it on its own terms, not yours.
We are not demanding that you abandon all of your opinions. We are encouraging you to actually understand the scholarship which you are denouncing.
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Well said. Amen. :o)
Could be, but that isn’t what he said. I see two problems. 1) It seems clear that the translators of the King James and their immediate readers all considered the Flood to be worldwide, and that’s not just a modern imposition on the translation. 2) Shouldn’t modern translators have taken their prospective readers into consideration when translating, rather than giving a false impression of the text’s actual meaning?
Where does the tradition of a worldwide Flood even come from? How ancient is the local flood interpretation?
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Great question. Try translating, say,The Iliad and The Odyssey from the original language for English readers in the year 2419. It might be harder than you think.
Errors of interpretation will be inevitable. That doesn’t mean that future scholars can’t help settle them.
Not true. I think it would be impossible, as I have no knowledge of what the language will look like in 2419.
But you seem to be saying that translating Genesis into English, whenever it’s done, is impossible. All translations are hopeless and convey a completely false idea of the original text. That would be another accusation of the translators’ incompetence, that they would try at all and think they had succeeded.
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Yes, I’m guessing that’s what you’d hope I was saying. I am not.
In fact, I’m saying the opposite.
That’s why simply reading a translation from 1611 and going with your gut needs to be informed by sound scholarship. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. :o)
See the title of the thread, e.g.
You got it precisely correct.
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Or just the normal linguistic drift of language over time, often pushed along by advance of our knowledge.
As @AllenWitmerMiller explains:
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To be clear, I do not wish to convey that everything I’m saying is explicitly endorsed by the GAE view, just that it’s among the available interpretive options legitimated by it.
This is a collaborative forum, after all. :o)
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Then you need to work on your expression.
That implies that the translators of the KJV and its contemporary readers would have understand that the Flood was local. Is that your assertion? Note, also, that you have ignored all the modern translations, which presumably are intended to be interpreted by modern readers using modern meanings.
What do you mean by that? What language is drifting, and what effect does that have on translating and reading? The most recent translations still talk of a worldwide Flood. You have to work really hard to assert otherwise, falling back as you have on your understanding of the original Hebrew and its ancient context (supposedly). That is indeed an accusation that modern translators have mistranslated, whether you notice that or not.
“Planet” is not relevant. “Globe” is not relevant. That’s a red herring. “Whole world” is relevant, and English speakers in 1611 thought that the Flood had covered the whole world, whatever its shape or relation to the rest of the universe.
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You seem to want me to be saying things I am not.
How, for example, could I start a thread about theological orthodoxy and heterodoxy if I’d already despaired of the efforts of all translators and interpreters?
Do you understand the difference between modern styles of declarative and definitive language versus the ancient use of phenomenological language? Ancient Hebrew employed phenomenological language extensively, with an entire vocabulary of not much mote than eight thousand words, much of which gets lost in translation.
Why don’t you seem to be willing to hear us here on Peaceful Science on our own terms, whether you agree with us or not? What is the hidden premise you’re operating with, which causes this disability? Please hear this as concern and not accusation.
It covered “the whole land” which was in view of the context and scope of its story.
@jack.collins ?
Cheers!
What can I say but that this is an amazingly naive statement because to read the story in its own context is to come away with my view …!
I guess enough is enough. I can end my side of the discussion here. You have managed to convince no-one but yourself. I tried hard to keep focus on God’s intent in this discussion but you managed to run it off the rails and ultimately make God out to be confused. Congratulations. You have done it again. You have reinforced the very reason why most creationists and I do mean MOST cannot adhere to your views in any way shape or form.
And you have created your own little fantasy about what has actually taken place here.
Zeal often leads to incautious error, and if I seem to have erred in your understanding, I hope at least I haven’t offended a brother in Christ.
Neither I nor God are confused; our common desire, which comes from God, between us all as believers, is for reconciliation.
Since when has truth ever been settled by a simple count of the available views?
Peace! :o)
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https://www.zondervan.com has John C. Collin’s book on “Reading Genesis Well” as an overview of many of the interpretive principles we’ve discussed here. And though I differ with him in ways I’m hoping to resolve, I am ready to recommend it here, as an evangelical. @jack.collins @KenKeathley @deuteroKJ … et. al.? :o)
Amen - to which one must add that no translation can, by itself, enable one to have a window into ancient worldviews - the modern reader (@John_Harshman included) is very unlikely to conceive of a “cosmology” in which the “whole world” is not considered as an entity at all, whether speherical, flat or pear-shaped. For that, one probably has to see the world through the eyes of a child again (before adults start teaching him stuff): sky is up, earth is down, sea is a lateral boundary… and it doesn’t cross his mind to ask how far that situation extends, any more than most of us have any clear conception that the universe has bounds.
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You got me. Of course I was talking to @swamidass when I said that. It would be good if you would address the matter, though.
No. But I would imagine a translator, 17th Century or modern, would be able to deal with that sort of thing, and would not translate “eretz” as “the earth” if it created a problem for the reader’s understanding. Am I giving them too much credit? If so, we seem back to imputations of incompetence.
Perfectly willing. I disagree with you. What else have I been saying? There is no hidden premise. I lack certain premises: that the bible is the word of God, accurate in all its original autographs, that it must be internally consistent in all ways and also consistent with “the book of Nature”, and that your interpretation is uncolored by a need to reconcile apparent inconsistencies.
That’s an interesting assertion, for which I find no justification in the text or (so far) in most interpretations of any great age, i.e. since geologists failed to find evidence of a Flood.
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