At 03:01 PM 07/02/02 -0500, PHSEELY@aol.com wrote:
>Given the fact that people as late and as sophisticated as Augustine
>understood Gen 1:16 literally, there can be no question that the original
>hearers of Gen 1:16 understood the words literally.
Did they? The original hearers were not steeped in Greek philosophy, no
matter what kind. Augustine did not belong to the people who originally
heard these texts in Hebrew. Hebrew thinking in the OT was not
philosophical, nor scientific. So, to draw conclusions like this is not
very scholarly. One should try to penetrate the way people in Semitic
countries were thinking 4000 years ago. I don't think, that anyone in the
last 2000 years could do that correctly. Though, generally speaking
pre-scientific thinking was more in stories and parables, I believe. That
is true for Western thinking as well.
God's inspiration does not mean that God would speak to people who could
not read in scientifically exact language. They would not understand it,
nor grasp the meaning of it.
Jan de K.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 07 2002 - 15:53:55 EST