I have experienced reading of Jewish writings for more than ten years now. One of the first things I noticed is that I had to learn to let go of holding onto things too tightly. If you do any reading of Jewish material, you may have noticed the same thing. It is educational on a number of levels (as one might anticipate).
One thing that I am referring to is very simple and basic. When you read Jewish writings, you will notice that people spell things differently. In my Greek-thinking, English language background, when I first began, that really drove me crazy. Finally, I realized that it was just a way of looking at things that was different. It was a way of saying, “does that really matter quite so much?” And it was clearly accepted by others in the typical community of readers. I’m sure there are reasons i don’t know of. For Sabbath you may see Shabbat or Shabbos. For God, maybe Elohim, maybe Eloqim. There are many such variations. One simply gets used yo it.
I open with this as a preface to some of the ensuing discussion. In the upcoming entries on the Biblical presentation of Creation, there will undoubtedly be some ideas presented that will be different from your beliefs. What I say will convince you of nothing. I will not be able to “change your mind.“ Nor is that my purpose. My purpose is to expose you to other ways of thinking about life, other ways of thinking about Scripture, and most importantly, appreciating God, for who he is. Being the One over all, his perspective has to include perspectives more than just my narrow perspective. So, I repeat the question, “does that really matter quite so much?” This is the LogAndSpeck question, really. Is it more important to be “right” than it is to understand the other person? We have spoken about this before. It doesn’t mean you have to adopt their way of thinking. It is the way we love our neighbor, to connect enough to understand them. This topic is really going to come up in another blog coming up soon.
There are several different things that I need to cover before we really look into the various levels of interpretation in Genesis 2. The first, I think, that we really should discuss has to do with what is taken as literal and what is taken as metaphorical. I have warned you before that I am one studied both in scientific areas and in religious/spiritual areas.
Step one for this process is to look at a topic that divides many people. Did Creation occur in seven 24-hour days literally, or are days defined in other ways? Again, I’m not going to convince you of anything. My role is to share what my studies have shown, and then you can make your choices.
First, some definitions from different resources that I use, including Olive Tree’s Enhanced Strongs Dictionary, the Complete Word Study Bible Dictionary, Brown-Driver-Briggs, and the Theological WordBook of the Old Testament (in the Bibliography section). The definitions are for the word “יום yom,” which is used at the end of each of the periods mentioned in Genesis 1, and you are used to seeing interpreted as “day.” You see, יום is interpreted in many ways in Scripture:
▶︎ Strongs day, time, year, age CWSBD day, time, period, daily BDB day; daylight; lifetime; year TWOT day, time, year.
In EDBH, the root is
- יום p.102 ascend;; establish (C45), and the cognate permutations meaning is (magnify/diminish)
And three Scriptural references:
⦁ 2 Peter 3:8
8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
⦁ Psalms 90:4
4 For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
And like a watch in the night.
And since we have been and will continue to talk about the language שׂפה and its vocabulary, one more reminder. God defines קרא (calls) אור as יום:
⦁ Genesis 1:5
5 God called the light אור Day יום, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening ערב and the morning בקר were the first day יום.
Four reminders from EDBH and cognate permutations dissections/digestions:
▶︎ אור p.6 light; illuminate;; expose/conceal (A8)
- אור/רבע/ערב cognate permutations (expand/contract activity)
▶︎ יום p.102 ascend;; establish (C21)
- בין/נקב/יום cognate permutations (magnify/diminish)
▶︎ בקר p.30 distinguish differences;; free from control (B27)
- בקר/ברך cognate permutations (develop/forsake)
▶︎ ערב p191 mix substances with no change in character; penetrate with foreign matter;; facilitate/restrain penetration (A49)
- אור/רבע/ערב cognate permutations (expand/contract activity)
- (Notice that אור light and ערב evening are in the same group.)
Most of the Cognate Permutations define a spectrum of meaning, the spectrum, the line along which the individual word or root sits. We will talk about this more later.
Now a couple of thoughts I want to share with you from AlephBeta. The first is a repeated teaching by R. David Fohrman. The second will be a document for you to read, which is a transcript from something I listened to on their website about seven years ago. I have not re-read the transcript recently. I recall when I did read it being impressed at a certain perspective of R. Fohrman. The document is fairly long, but as I recall, interesting enough that I shared it with a friend who was asking about “the Jewish perspective on Creation.” Please realize that there is not one “Jewish perspective.“ If there is one thing that I could say is a fairly typical “Jewish perspective,“ it is that different points of view are expected and welcomed. Learning takes place when people having different opinions communicate. That comes from their understanding of Scripture.
I cannot tell you whether what is shared is consistent with where I am going in my teaching in the first few chapters of Genesis. And it doesn’t bother me if it is different. Again, I do not try to tell you that my way is “the way.” I just, try to help you see that there are many ways to unravel the tapestry of Scripture, and as long as they are consistent with other parts of Scripture, they may reasonably be somewhat different. If one comes up with an interpretation that is totally inconsistent with Scripture’s interpreting itself (Analogy of Faith), that is a dangerous direction. (You may want to refer to Post 04. Interpretation Overview.)
The first idea I wanted to point out from Fohrman is that he frequently says it is important to ask, when you are reading any book, what type of book it is. He goes through explanation of this on several of his videos. The important thing to be aware of is that, even though there are historical accounts in the Bible, the Bible is not a history book. For studiers of history, like my friend, David, history books do teach us a great deal. History may help us understand concepts like “the Dark Ages” and “The Enlightenment,” which are “eras/ages.” But there is much to life beyond history. And I refer you back to the subtitle of our website; our perspective is that the Bible is the Revelation of Life. Scripture is a love letter from God
in which he shares about himself and life. There is history, there is poetry, there is instruction on many levels.
That is the first AlephBeta point, to understand the nature of Scripture. Here is the document, the transcript from a presentation. Sorry, it is very long.
If the link does not take you directly there, you can search for this content, and there is a way to download the transcript. Thanks yo my Webmaster for the link!
The second point is in the attached document, pertaining to the Creation Narratives. Read at your leisure. Read it in light of information shared above. Read it not to adopt someone else’s viewpoint but to recognize that it is a viewpoint. And there is consistency in it with the remainder of Scripture, given the understanding of what the Hebrew language is actually saying. (If, for some reason you cannot get it, know that there is no discrepancy in this interpretation and scientific explanations of progression of development of life over time.)
There are many perspectives on the Creation Narratives. There is an interesting parable in the movie Mission to Mars, and the montage below was created from one part of that movie, showing the development of mankind in a very short clip (I could not locate the actual video clip on the net to link to).
I share with you another thought from AlephBeta that particularly pertains to my sharing here. The perspective being shared on this website is purposely not the traditional Jewish perspective nor the traditional Christian perspective that you may have pre-formed in your mind. (Again recall there are huge spectrums of belief in both.)
Here is a brief excerpt of a discussion between R. Fohrman and another teacher that was broadcast to the particular subscriber’s group I am in.
- “So what you were going to do is that every time the Torah is going to talk to you in human terms, if you can factor out the humanness, so you can factor out that man-centered view, then you can arrive at what it is that we are really talking about. So that’s the kind of background for how to read this.”
Factoring out our “human-centered view” is obviously not 100% possible, but the key is to recognize our own “logs.” Interestingly, one thing they spoke about was that having a fresh set of eyes without the traditional background of looking at things often allows new insights and perspectives. Hopefully that is what we are providing here. The entire point of that excerpt will lead us to two other anticipated entries. One will be more on the two-letter word את, the so-called “marker of the direct object,” which this writer believes requires more “fleshing out.” And the other is the point of “considering oneself.” Both will tie directly into the LogAndSpeck theme, and we will tie into the Creation Narratives.
Now, let us circle back to why I went through all of this about “days“ and different perspectives on Creation. There are two reasons.
First, if you will note, on days/eras one through six, at the end of each time period, there is a statement saying, and there was evening ערב, and there was morning בקר, time period _____.
The root meanings:
- ערב p.191 mix substances with no change in character; penetrate with foreign matter;; facilitate/restrain penetration (A49)
- בקר p.30 distinguish differences;; free from control (B27)
Rather than thinking “evening” and morning, think of a time for mixing substances with no change in character; penetrate with foreign matter and a time for distinguishing differences, and think of these particularly in terms of what is described, different forms of life.
There is no such statement, “and there was evening ערב, and there was morning בקר, time period _____,” for an end to time period the seventh שבע. One way to interpret that sequence of events is to say that there is not yet an end to time period the seventh שבע. In other words, we are still in the time of the seventh שבע. Our whole premise here is that time in the garden was a time of formation יצר for mankind. Perhaps that formation יצר is still ongoing, the completion שבע being when we are truly formed in the image, like the likeness of God.
- שבע p.254 submit to God; complete;; control movement/action (E5)
- שבע cognate permutations (step out/withdraw; increase/decrease)
Another way to interpret ערב and בקר not being there is is no longer a “penetration of foreign matter,” no new creations being brought in, but with the coming of the בקרfollowing day the sixth, is the ongoing process of “distinguishing differences,” which we see with the LORD giving the man האדם the privilege of calling names. This is, indeed, “distinguishing differences.”
One part of an upcoming blog entry is a dissection of Genesis 2 with cognate permutatios of זכר p.67 store in memory; remember;; engage in/block movement (E18)
- Impression זכר/שיר/יצר cognate permutations (advance/retard)
See that יצר, to form/to fashion is one of the cognate permutations that will show up in that dissection.
Are we still in the time of formation of mankind? And this will tie into the theme of another planned blog, which is God Has a Soul (there are many pieces to tie together – deciding the order is tricky).
Certainly in the Garden, mankind was being formed/fashioned. Are we still? Or was that process “extended” because of our disobedience, the way that the Israelites had to return to the wilderness upon the failure of “the spies.” Thematic connection?
The other reason for going through the perspective on the “time periods” ties to the question just raised, as well. If we do not know how long each of these time periods lasted, we do not know how long האדם had been created prior to being placed in Gan Eden, גן עדן. ((A VERY brief side comment, Eden עדן p.180 delight; satisfy all needs;; rely and gratify (A18) is cognate with the word for Lord, אדן p.4 sustain; provide base. Think of it as “the garden of the Lord.”))
See that in Genesis 2:7, האדם, the man, was first created outside the garden. Then in verse 8, it says God planted a garden “eastward קדם.” But as noted in our translations, קדם can also mean “before” or preceding in time.
Fohrman makes the point in his teaching that Torah is not always chronological in its presentation, but topical. Things are juxtaposed not by time but by a point that is being made (again, not a history book). So, it may well be that the Garden was created “before קדם”, the man האדם, which would make sense since plants and trees were earlier in the Creation scheme. Whichever was created first, the point is that האדם was outside the Garden, and then “placed into” the Garden. So, there was some _____ amount of time he was outside this idyllic place, presumably in “the wilds,” where there were other creatures present (See Genesis 1:24-31). There, before language, he might of necessity, in order to rule/have dominion over them in the competition for the green things they were all eating, have had to learn to develop tools that would make up for the fact he was not as strong or fast as some other creatures. And during that time he had some time to see other living things and creations, to experience them and learn their ways. Again, you may reject all of this if you believe יום equals 24 hours. My personal belief, you have heard many times before, is that Scripture is a revelation of life. Scripture does not conflict with science because sciences are things that we have discovered about life on earth. If there are apparent conflicts, it is likely in our lack of understanding. Scripture knows life intimately.
There is much more to follow, but we stop for now.
Ⓒ Copyright LogAndSpeck October 2023. Please cite if copying.