Kyle Essary says:
November 9, 2012 at 10:16 pm
I don’t really care about the OEC/YEC/TE debates, but I have many problems with this graphic. I’m not really interested in debating people about it (because I know this topic causes many debates), so I’ll probably just post this:1. This graphic requires a hermeneutic that wouldn’t be used with other symbols and images in the very same passages from which these passages are taken.2. The OT never addresses cosmology in the way that anyone today thinks of cosmology, which is what this graphic is trying to address. It’s trying to say, “You think of a world that looks like this (largely from your science textbooks), but they thought of a world that looks like this.” Then, they make a chart similar to something we might see in a textbook.3. At most, the Bible addresses cosmological ideas secondarily, as off hand references or in poetic passages. The problem is that cultures across time have rarely made literal off-hand “cosmological” statements. Sheldon might…but not the rest of us. We say things like, “Good heavens, I didn’t wake up until after the sun rose this morning.” I think we have much better reason to believe that the authors, compilers, editors, etc. of the OT were using language phenomenologically instead of anything similar to language that could be used to make a scientifically (or even an astrologically) shaped chart.4. This chart assumes that we can get into the mind of the author(s). We can’t…but that’s for another day.5. This chart assumes a large amount of uniformity from texts written along a broad spectrum of time and location. It’s naive to think that a second-millennium Hittite perspective was uniform or even that similar to a 5th century Babylonian one. Even if you don’t hold conservative dating schemes for the OT, critical scholars frequently reference the many conflicts in other aspects of Syro-Palestinian culture, Babylonian culture, etc…so why assume uniformity in this regard?So let’s be honest and call this what it is, because it isn’t an “Ancient Hebrew Conception of the Universe.” This is a 21st century reconstruction, created with an agenda. It is possibly based on cosmological ideas interpreted with a literalistic hermeneutic of texts written across vastly different cultures, locations and times. Stated like that, it sort of deflates it’s value, doesn’t it?
For me the most comprehensive place in Scripture for me that sets my spirit straight is Job 28.
ReplyDeleteI also know that there is a primary position mined out of those words that concur with Proverbs 16:20, which is for practical purposes is a very broad stroke of the brush on the canvas of Biblical cosmology.
At the end of the day if Luke 1:4 or John 20:30-21 are not where we are left, we probably ought to leave off further discovery?