They are the ones who are twisting things. That’s not what is in the text.
It is after midnight. I have pointed to what is in the actual text for hours, and it seems to have had zero effect. I am calling it a night.
Here you make exactly the same “contextual” argumnent for &:21 that I use in 6:7. Methinks you can’t have it both ways.
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I’ve got a very real problem with the notion that something new about the pre-incarnate Christ was “created by God” that late in the game. Even if all you were saying was that it was at this time He took on a human form, while remaining divine, I can’t see how you’d get that from the text. So, please put it in your own words, and be specific as to what, precisely, you see the text as saying is happening.
I find it “overwrought” that you INEXTRICABLY LINK AND LOCK two different verses… solely in the grounds that they both use the same word.
You write:
“If the LORD is the one doing the speaking in 6:7 surely He is aware of every population of humans. Therefore when He says “I will destroy ha-adam” if “ha-adam” means the same thing that it meant in 1:27 and if ha-adam means the human race in 1:27 as you are saying then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the text is saying that the flood destroyed all of the human race (save the 8).”
Does it ever make sense to think 6:7 means anything BUT “humans” (generic men)?
Does it ever make sense for 1:26 to mean “The Man”?
I am just saying if “ha-adam” means “humanity” as some of you think it does, then 6:7 teaches that the flood was universal with respect to humanity. All humans physically died except for the eight on the ark. You can come to that conclusion without linking it to 1:27. All it takes is mistranslating ha-adam as some of you insist on doing- ostensibly for tradition’s sake, but you don’t feel bound by tradition when you do not wish to be.
Yes, considering the basic rules of Hebrew grammar, the fact that “adam” is the same in singular or plural form, and that we know that the broader human race was not reduced to eight persons a flood, it makes perfect sense to translate it “I will destroy the men who I have made.” referring only to those who are the result of the formation of Adam in chapter two rather than the entire human race.
No. There is it just “adam”. There it is properly translated “Man” as in “mankind” or “humanity”. Other places it is a proper name, Adam. There is no definite article attached to it in verse 1:26.
After sleeping on it, I think the root difficulty here is that you and I have a different view of what scripture is which cannot be reconciled by what the actual text says. I think its divinely inspired and profitable for teaching. You want to use it to promote what you see as good and true ideas. My nit-picking insistence on discovering what the actual text really says is getting in the way of using the idea of scripture to support some good purpose. The actual content is not so malleable to even positive agendas. It has its own.
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After sleeping on the matter, @anon46279830, my problem is ranked in this order of increasing importance:
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That you think your overall sentence, which is English intentionally rendered non-grammatical by mixing singular and plural, avoiding available terms that would eliminate the conflicts, is a desirable end result.
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That you think hundreds of Christian translators are making a meaningfully flawed translation by retaining rules of grammar and syntax.
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That you think you, a non-professional translator, has been given direct divine inspiration that puts your rendering at an advantage over all the other translations.
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That you think your inspired version actually renders a different spiritual interpretation that validly binds a Christian reader to a new meaning not available to anyone until the recent few years.
The text mixes singular and plural, which is just fine if you understand it as a list of three things rather than just one thing said three times, along with the concept that husband and wife are “one flesh”.
They are violating the rules of syntax by leaving off the definite article on “adam”. More recent translations have walked back this error in chapter two but it is hard for translators to throw out tradition when theologians won’t budge. They have not yet applied the same rules to chapter one.
But you have zero problem believing that most of the church has had it wrong on other issues related to early Genesis. You just don’t want to believe it on this one.
I do believe I was given a divine insight on early Genesis but it is completely unnecessary for you to believe that. All I am asking you to believe is what is in the text. Either the “ha” is there in 1:27 or it is not. Look for yourself and see. And look at what all sane references say that prefix means.
It is not my inspired version, its the text. And I have no idea whether or not other people have seen the same thing over the years. My guess is that many have. Maybe they all got shut down by people with just the sort of arguments that you see here. Only now we have the internet and self-publishing, so a voice crying in the wilderness can get that much louder. Nevertheless, hearing the voice is not the same as listening to it. That is not a question of the reality of what is in the text, but of the will.
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In fairness, George, Mark is correct in being willing to posit some new development in Scriptural understanding, whether you or I agree with him or not.
That puts him solidly in the camp of those who “search out the matter” to a degree where new understandings are possible.
Remember, this is what has been going on for more than six millenia, and why biblical studies, as a discipline, is still actively pursued.
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.As the heavens for height and the earth for depth, So the heart of kings is unsearchable.Take away the dross from the silver, And there comes out a vessel for the smith…” – Proverbs 25:2-4 NASB
Any attempt to "shame Mark or I for being, in your mind, too “unusual,” will only be countered, in our minds, with the grand promise implied above.
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Considering that multiple people FLUENT IN HEBREW reject your conclusion… it is just meshugga for you to say they are “violating the rules of syntax”. I think you need to speak to a Rabbi and get your mind-gears straightened out.
