Are Fossils evidence of evolution ....or are the evidence of fossils

[teddyv]

10 minutes ago, kingdombrat said:

Ironic enough, within our very own Bible in the Book(s) of Joshua + I/II Kings/Chronicles and Psalms (reference only) reveals a Book Believers in God used in the same time frame as Joshua and before/after David was King David called Jasher.   This Book which Joshua, the Leader after Moses, and David and the Hebrew Peoples were using/reading/studying/following like we do in our own BIBLE, also includes another view of Creation and Eden.   It's still the SAME PICTURE and Chronological Order, but its has interesting tidbit that paint a [Fuller View].

 

So clearly, the Book of Jasher is out when Moses writes Job, the Pentateuch and both Books parallel one another but there are different views between them that are interesting views.   I think reading Jasher would help you see the Genesis Account from Moses clearer.

I was looking up Book of Jasher as I have not read it. GotQuestions states the following:

Quote

Another book by this same name, called by many “Pseudo-Jasher,” while written in Hebrew, is also not the “Book of Jasher” mentioned in Scripture. It is a book of Jewish legends from the creation to the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, but scholars hold that it did not exist before A.D. 1625. In addition, there are several other theological works by Jewish rabbis and scholars called “Sefer ha Yashar,” but none of these claim to be the original Book of Jasher.

Are you referring to Psuedo-Jasher? 

[Sparks]

50 minutes ago, teddyv said:

There is no indication in Genesis that this was how it was authored - that seems an assumption on your part. Other than some of the NT letters, there are no unequivocal attributions of authorship of most books.

For Genesis, I'd personally lean toward oral stories being collated and penned, probably after the exodus of Israel from Egypt. A 'new' nation needed an identity after so many years in Egyptian bondage and identities are usually rooted in history. I'm aware this is also an assumption on my part.

ETA: this is certainly well off-topic.

I spelled it out for you. They are called Toledoths. 

Genesis literally tells you who wrote each section.  There is no mystery to these authors, nor conspiracy.  Each author's writing style is different.  

Heavens & Earth (Genesis 2:4)
Adam (Genesis 5:1)
Noah (Genesis 6:9)
Noah’s sons (Genesis 10.1)
Shem (Genesis 11:10)
Terah (Genesis 11:27)
Ishmael (Genesis 25:12)
Isaac (Genesis 25:19)
Esau (Genesis 36:1)                      
Jacob (Genesis 37:2)

[Justin Adams]

As many commentators point out, Genesis is structured by 10 uses of the word toledoth, “generations.” The word means something along the lines of “begotten things,” and the toledoth statements head the various sections of Genesis. When Genesis 2:4 announces “these are the begettings of heaven and earth” and then proceeds to recount the creation of Adam and Eve, we are to understand that the first human couple are products of the marriage of heaven and earth.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a record of creating not begetting. God does order earth to bring forth plants and animals during the creation week, but Genesis conceives of that as God’s own work rather than the begetting of earth. When we get to Genesis 2, earth is a more active partner in making: Watered by rain from heaven, the earth will sprout with plants (2:5), and man is presented as one of the “begettings” of heaven and earth, the product of earthy dust and heavenly Breath. God creates from nothing; heaven and earth and human beings are fruitful by begetting.

Some toledoth are genealogies. Other toledoth statements introduce long narrative sections. The toledoth of Terah contains the story of Abraham (11:27-25:11), and the toledoth of Isaac is the lengthy story of Jacob (25:18-35:29). That someone’s life history is seen as something “generated” by a father is instructive in itself. Terah doesn’t just father a son named Abram; he fathers a son Abram who leaves Ur and Haran, sojourns in Egypt, delivers Lot, fathers Ishmael, pleads for Sodom, etc. Terah “begets” Abraham-with-his-life-history.

We can summarize the “generic” variation of the toledoth schematically:

1. Heaven and Earth: narrative

2. Adam: genealogy

3. Noah: short genealogy + medium length narrative

4. Noah’s sons: long genealogy + short narrative

5. Shem: genealogy

6. Terah: short genealogy + long narrative

7. Ishmael: genealogy

8. Isaac: narrative

9. Esau: genealogy

10: Jacob: narrative

There is something of a pattern in the alternation. Let G stand for genealogy, and N for narrative, and the pattern is, if we ignore the combination sections, N-G-N-G, N-G-N-G-N. Along the way, there is an overall shift, in terms of sheer page count, from genealogy to narrative. Noah’s toledoth begins with a very brief genealogy and then goes to a fairly long narrative, but the narrative is nowhere close to the same length as the narrative that follows the genealogy of Terah in section 6.

After Terah’s toledoth, further, the combination sections fall out completely. There are still genealogies, but they are not connected to the long narratives of the Isaac and Jacob sections. Noah, Noah’s sons, and Terah all generate descendants and stories; Isaac and Jacob generate only stories, while Ishmael and Esau, the other branches from Abraham and Isaac respectively, generate only sons and daughters.

The indidividuals who get narrative treatment are noteworthy: Noah, Terah (Abraham), Isaac (Jacob), and Jacob (Joseph). These are clearly the characters that hold the most interest for the writer of Genesis, since they form the genealogy of Israel. But the similarity of “genre” also brings out parallels between the different characters: Noah is a new Adam; Abraham a new Noah, rebuilding a world after the flood at Babel; Jacob is an Abraham and a Noah of a different sort, etc.

And each of the narrative-heavy sections hearkens back to the original narrative of heaven and earth: Noah and his wife, Abram and Sarai, Jacob and his wives, Joseph and the daughter of the Egyptian priest are new unions of heaven and earth, new Adams and Eves, beginning the project of undoing the curse.

In the end, the import of the pattern of the toledoths can best be summarized this way: All nations generate people, but the story of the world is borne by the people of God. Or, more abstractly: Everyone generates things, but the people of God are the ones who generate history, who generate events.

We can arrive at a similar conclusion from another angle. After the extra-toledothic opening, Genesis moves in several toledothic cycles:

1. Generations of heaven and earth, 2:4-4:26

2. Generations of Adam, 5:1-6:8

3. Generations of Noah, 6:9-9:29

(New Creation, 8:1-9:29)

1’. Generations of Shem, Ham, Japheth, 10:1-11:9

2’. Generations of Shem, 11:10-26

3. Generations of Terah, 11:27-25:11

1”. Generations of Ishmael, 25:12-18

3”. Generations of Isaac, 25:19-35:29

1”’. Generations of Esau, 36:1-37:1

3”’. Generations of Jacob, 37:1-50:26

The cycle is easiest to see in the first six toledoth, the ones that climax with Noah and Abram respectively. The first two #1 sections include lists of descendants without any ages or dates/ Both include references to building and city culture, Cain’s city and Babel. Both  have fall stories. The first has a triple fall story – Adam, Cain, and the sons of God; Babel is the fall of the new humanity after the flood.

Both #2 sections are genealogies with ages, which is to say, with chronologies. Both trace ten generations, first from Adam to Noah, then from Noah to Abram. The #3 sections are generically similar. Instead of lists or brief narratives, they are long narratives.

The flood is the dividing line between the two cycles, marking the end of the world of creation. and the beginning of a new world. It reverses creation, breaking down the firmament, so that waters above and below rejoin, covering the earth, killing everything that breaths. After it has decreated the world, the world is put back together in a sequence that roughly corresponds to the seven-day sequence of Genesis 1 (I’m sure I picked this up from James Jordan somewhere):

Day 1: Wind (Heb. ru’ach ), 8:1; cf. 1:2

Day 2: Water sources above and below close, 8:2; cf. 1:6-8

Day 3: Waters separated, dry land appears, 8:3-5 (plants, 8:11); cf. 1:9-13

Day 4: Window of ark, 8:6 – link to heavenly bodies?; cf. 1:14-19

Day 5: Birds sent out, 8:7-12; cf. 1:20-23

Day 6: Animals pour out on the earth, Noah as new Adam; 8:13-9:17; cf. 1:24-31

Day 7: Noah’s vineyard, rest, and Ham’s fall, 9:18-29; cf. 2:1-3 (or, 2:1-3:24)

This is not a reset, not a mere return to the beginning. Humanity has grown up between Adam and Noah, and there are some new privileges for Noah. Humanity has been expanding, gaining new skills in metallurgy and animal husbandry and arts and music, architecture and city planning. Yahweh affirms Noah’s advance over Adam by forming a covenant with him.

https://theopolisinstitute.com/toledoth-and-the-structure-of-genesis/

[teddyv]

1 minute ago, Sparks said:

I spelled it out for you. They are called Toledoths. 

Genesis literally tells you who wrote each section.  There is no mystery to these authors, nor conspiracy.  Each author's writing style is different.  

Heavens & Earth (Genesis 2:4)
Adam (Genesis 5:1)
Noah (Genesis 6:9)
Noah’s sons (Genesis 10.1)
Shem (Genesis 11:10)
Terah (Genesis 11:27)
Ishmael (Genesis 25:12)
Isaac (Genesis 25:19)
Esau (Genesis 36:1)                      
Jacob (Genesis 37:2)

I am aware of toledoth. It is generally translated as an "account". An account does not have to be written by that person. I can write an account of my forefathers. I've searched several reasonable scholarly articles and none are making the claim of authorship to the individuals. Tradition has Moses as the author of Genesis and the rest of the Torah. 

[Sparks]

4 minutes ago, teddyv said:

I am aware of toledoth. It is generally translated as an "account". An account does not have to be written by that person. I can write an account of my forefathers. I've searched several reasonable scholarly articles and none are making the claim of authorship to the individuals. Tradition has Moses as the author of Genesis and the rest of the Torah. 

It's translated as Generations. 

I can see we are not going to agree.  Believe what you wish.  Thanks for the chat.

[teddyv]

5 minutes ago, Justin Adams said:

As many commentators point out, Genesis is structured by 10 uses of the word toledoth, “generations.” The word means something along the lines of “begotten things,” and the toledoth statements head the various sections of Genesis. When Genesis 2:4 announces “these are the begettings of heaven and earth” and then proceeds to recount the creation of Adam and Eve, we are to understand that the first human couple are products of the marriage of heaven and earth.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a record of creating not begetting. God does order earth to bring forth plants and animals during the creation week, but Genesis conceives of that as God’s own work rather than the begetting of earth. When we get to Genesis 2, earth is a more active partner in making: Watered by rain from heaven, the earth will sprout with plants (2:5), and man is presented as one of the “begettings” of heaven and earth, the product of earthy dust and heavenly Breath. God creates from nothing; heaven and earth and human beings are fruitful by begetting.

Some toledoth are genealogies. Other toledoth statements introduce long narrative sections. The toledoth of Terah contains the story of Abraham (11:27-25:11), and the toledoth of Isaac is the lengthy story of Jacob (25:18-35:29). That someone’s life history is seen as something “generated” by a father is instructive in itself. Terah doesn’t just father a son named Abram; he fathers a son Abram who leaves Ur and Haran, sojourns in Egypt, delivers Lot, fathers Ishmael, pleads for Sodom, etc. Terah “begets” Abraham-with-his-life-history.

We can summarize the “generic” variation of the toledoth schematically:

1. Heaven and Earth: narrative

2. Adam: genealogy

3. Noah: short genealogy + medium length narrative

4. Noah’s sons: long genealogy + short narrative

5. Shem: genealogy

6. Terah: short genealogy + long narrative

7. Ishmael: genealogy

8. Isaac: narrative

9. Esau: genealogy

10: Jacob: narrative

There is something of a pattern in the alternation. Let G stand for genealogy, and N for narrative, and the pattern is, if we ignore the combination sections, N-G-N-G, N-G-N-G-N. Along the way, there is an overall shift, in terms of sheer page count, from genealogy to narrative. Noah’s toledoth begins with a very brief genealogy and then goes to a fairly long narrative, but the narrative is nowhere close to the same length as the narrative that follows the genealogy of Terah in section 6.

After Terah’s toledoth, further, the combination sections fall out completely. There are still genealogies, but they are not connected to the long narratives of the Isaac and Jacob sections. Noah, Noah’s sons, and Terah all generate descendants and stories; Isaac and Jacob generate only stories, while Ishmael and Esau, the other branches from Abraham and Isaac respectively, generate only sons and daughters.

The indidividuals who get narrative treatment are noteworthy: Noah, Terah (Abraham), Isaac (Jacob), and Jacob (Joseph). These are clearly the characters that hold the most interest for the writer of Genesis, since they form the genealogy of Israel. But the similarity of “genre” also brings out parallels between the different characters: Noah is a new Adam; Abraham a new Noah, rebuilding a world after the flood at Babel; Jacob is an Abraham and a Noah of a different sort, etc.

And each of the narrative-heavy sections hearkens back to the original narrative of heaven and earth: Noah and his wife, Abram and Sarai, Jacob and his wives, Joseph and the daughter of the Egyptian priest are new unions of heaven and earth, new Adams and Eves, beginning the project of undoing the curse.

In the end, the import of the pattern of the toledoths can best be summarized this way: All nations generate people, but the story of the world is borne by the people of God. Or, more abstractly: Everyone generates things, but the people of God are the ones who generate history, who generate events.

We can arrive at a similar conclusion from another angle. After the extra-toledothic opening, Genesis moves in several toledothic cycles:

1. Generations of heaven and earth, 2:4-4:26

2. Generations of Adam, 5:1-6:8

3. Generations of Noah, 6:9-9:29

(New Creation, 8:1-9:29)

1’. Generations of Shem, Ham, Japheth, 10:1-11:9

2’. Generations of Shem, 11:10-26

3. Generations of Terah, 11:27-25:11

1”. Generations of Ishmael, 25:12-18

3”. Generations of Isaac, 25:19-35:29

1”’. Generations of Esau, 36:1-37:1

3”’. Generations of Jacob, 37:1-50:26

The cycle is easiest to see in the first six toledoth, the ones that climax with Noah and Abram respectively. The first two #1 sections include lists of descendants without any ages or dates/ Both include references to building and city culture, Cain’s city and Babel. Both  have fall stories. The first has a triple fall story – Adam, Cain, and the sons of God; Babel is the fall of the new humanity after the flood.

Both #2 sections are genealogies with ages, which is to say, with chronologies. Both trace ten generations, first from Adam to Noah, then from Noah to Abram. The #3 sections are generically similar. Instead of lists or brief narratives, they are long narratives.

The flood is the dividing line between the two cycles, marking the end of the world of creation. and the beginning of a new world. It reverses creation, breaking down the firmament, so that waters above and below rejoin, covering the earth, killing everything that breaths. After it has decreated the world, the world is put back together in a sequence that roughly corresponds to the seven-day sequence of Genesis 1 (I’m sure I picked this up from James Jordan somewhere):

Day 1: Wind (Heb. ru’ach ), 8:1; cf. 1:2

Day 2: Water sources above and below close, 8:2; cf. 1:6-8

Day 3: Waters separated, dry land appears, 8:3-5 (plants, 8:11); cf. 1:9-13

Day 4: Window of ark, 8:6 – link to heavenly bodies?; cf. 1:14-19

Day 5: Birds sent out, 8:7-12; cf. 1:20-23

Day 6: Animals pour out on the earth, Noah as new Adam; 8:13-9:17; cf. 1:24-31

Day 7: Noah’s vineyard, rest, and Ham’s fall, 9:18-29; cf. 2:1-3 (or, 2:1-3:24)

This is not a reset, not a mere return to the beginning. Humanity has grown up between Adam and Noah, and there are some new privileges for Noah. Humanity has been expanding, gaining new skills in metallurgy and animal husbandry and arts and music, architecture and city planning. Yahweh affirms Noah’s advance over Adam by forming a covenant with him.

https://theopolisinstitute.com/toledoth-and-the-structure-of-genesis/

Heh, I literally read that just before you posted it.

 

BTW, posting that entire article, even with the link to source, could be considered a breach of fair use. I know the site does allow sharing, but it is still under copyright.

[teddyv]

2 minutes ago, Sparks said:

It's translated as Generations. 

That does not change anything.

2 minutes ago, Sparks said:

I can see we are not going to agree.  Believe what you wish.  Thanks for the chat.

All I'm after is where you are getting your interpretation from. If it's your view that's fine. It just does not seem to be a majority view.

[Sparks]

1 minute ago, teddyv said:

That does not change anything.

It corrected something.

1 minute ago, teddyv said:

All I'm after is where you are getting your interpretation from. If it's your view that's fine. It just does not seem to be a majority view.

I really would not bank on the majority view, for much.  The authors are named, but I guess we can pretend they are not. 

I had asked you some questions that were on topic.  Do you plan to answer those?

[Justin Adams]

4 minutes ago, teddyv said:

All I'm after is where you are getting your interpretation from. If it's your view that's fine. It just does not seem to be a majority view.

Read the history here: http://www.talkgenesis.org/genesis-toledoth-mystery/

[teddyv]

8 minutes ago, Sparks said:

I had asked you some questions that were on topic.  Do you plan to answer those?

I missed that one from the other day. At this point, I see little point in continuing it. We've both had our say.