Spoke to Kent Hovind!

@Djordje

So… ICK… if the reader is so concrete in his or her thinking that Cain’s wife MUST have been a sister or neice?

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I don’t dispute it at all. I just think it makes no difference to my point and my question. In fact, if you take that translation as correct, it uses the, which rules out genealogical Eve in favor of sole genetic Eve. All female-lineage genetic material must trace back to Eve, or she isn’t the mother of all living, only a mother of all living. Eve must be mtEve. The strong implication is of a bottleck of two, or at least of coalescence to a single couple. Maybe you should repudiate that translation.

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Calling Kent Hovind “Reverend” is atrocious. He is gets no reverence from me. He is a convicted felon.

Sure, but if the makes any sense, she must be the coalescent of the human population of 1AD. Which of course you have ruled out.

A quick look at the Hebrew will show that the “the” present in English translations is an artifact of translation.

Hebrew, unlike Greek, does not revel in the specific article “the”. It is only occasionally present, explicitlty, in Hebrew sentences.

Context is the only (inadequate) guide to the translators.

I believe the vagueness is INTENTIONAL…

… because the author of Genesis 1 and 2 WANTS the story to work at 2 levels:

At the seemingly obvious level… and at the ALTERNATE level!

Sure. But it wasn’t my preferred translation. It was Joshua’s. The question is what the text is supposed to mean. An interpretation of “the” contradicts genealogical Eve; an interpretation of “a” supports it. Leave out the article, and you can make your choice, but in such a case I think “the” is implied. Perhaps attempts to reconcile Genesis with science are problematic.

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Agreed, but not on the part of the authors. Eye of the beholder.

Most attempts to reconcile Genesis with science are problematic.

But the exercise is NECESSARY if we hope to convince Creationists that there is ALSO room for Evolutionary processes.

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Kent Hovind is a convicted felon. Calling him Reverend is audacious. Having Dr. Swamidass and PS engaging with Kent Hovind or anyone from the Kent Hovind organization is giving them legitimacy where none is deserved.

Au contraire, @John_Harshman,

Only the author or editor could so deliberately craft Genesis 1 and 2 to make either version seem plausi le.

That is no accidental stacking of words a… both the ones specifically used, and the ones that appear to be specifically excluded!

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It seems to me that the absence of articles in Hebrew might be the major culprit here, and that only your expectation of articles creates the ambiguity.

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As regards the supposed “requirement” to agree with Adam’s words, if you believe in the Bible, try this exercise.
Go through the narrative, and write down what God says, and then what Adam says, on the topic of his condition post-Fall.
Then, ask whether Adam agrees with God about his status as being in rebellion with God.
Which of Adam’s claims are held out by the bible as accurate, if any, and which, in the same manner as Cain’s response to God’s question about the whereabouts of his brother Abel, are deliberately and even artfully counterfactual, and amount to a lie before God?
Adam is not held up as a paragon of virtue nor as a reliable source of information post-Fall. He has learned to dodge the truth, rather than speak it. The serpent’s example has taken him over.
Eve, who has, by her own rebellion, consigned her own children to a kind of death towards God, at least struggles harder to speak the truth. Adam chooses to flatter her, rather than to agree with God’s truth.
Whether one accepts all the above or not, it does give one pause to simply go with what Adam says, incautiously, as completely accurate.

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At least some of the Hebrew editors ALSO knew how to say things in Greek. They knew what they were doing.

Did they? Back when the Hebrew was written? And do Greek translations of Genesis include the article there?

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The first chapters of Genesis appear to have a strong Persian contact… so at the very least, the Hebrew priests were familiar with Indo-European grammars.

I dont have access to the Greek at the moment. That is an interesting question!

And lets not forget that the Philistines, present in the Levant as early as 1130 bce, were quite Greek-ish!

It would be very surprising if the priestly clans didnt have several family members (each) - - fluent in the Philistine language… if only just to speak with informants about Philistine war plans!

How Greekish were they? What I see is that they may have originally spoken an Indo-European language, though the evidence for that is sparse, but that fairly early they adopted a West Semitic language.

@deuteroKJ does Hebrew have definitive articles?