Cheryl

Okay, I’m back. There must be a limit to how long these posts and comments can be because my post kept disappearing. Oh well, to carry on…

Michael you said “I am sleepless so I have been surfing the net a little on the perfect/pluperfect aspects of 2:19. I found two online resources of interest. One is from the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne. Dr. Douglas McC. L. Judisch writes in EXEGETICAL NOTES ON GENESIS 2: 18-24“Such a usage of the conjunction often implies a pluperfect understanding of the verbal form which it precedes, as is reflected here in the rendering “had formed”.

This particular quote isn’t much help because although they say that the verse can imply a pluperfect understanding, they do not give the reasoning why a pluperfect is allowed in the sentence.

The second quote was more along the line of trying to find a reasoning for their rendering.

You said:”The other website is called tektonics. It is more polemic but goes into much more detail about the “waw consecutive.”

This site at least tried to give a reason for their belief that the grammar is pluperfect and that is certainly more of a help. To tell you the truth, I was turned off by the question “was the author of Genesis 1 & 2 a flaming knucklehead?” but I bit my lip and kept reading.

The thing that I noticed from this site is that they never gave the option that God created the first set of animals by commanding them into existence and the next set by forming them from the dust of the earth.  Their options were only that God either created the animals before man existed or he created them after man. They didn’t seem to reason through that there was a logical third option (therefore they didn’t even try to refute that option).

I picked this up that I saw was important from the article:  “there are places where a pluperfect can be rendered in accordance with a summarizing or recapitulating use of the waw consecutive. Collins [Coll.WAP] points out that there are cases of unmarked pluperfects in the OT, and that the specific verb in question in this verse itself often warrants a pluperfect translation.â€

This however is where the problem itself lies and that is cited by the book “Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics†edited by Robert D. Bergen.  The link that you gave me is correct in citing the fact that there can be unmarked pluperfects in Hebrew and therefore there are examples of some scripture that do not have the “normal†Hebrew markings that cause translators to render them as pluperfect.  However a translator cannot just render a verb as pluperfect willy-nilly (that’s a technical term that I am sure you will need to look up in dictionary.com just as I had to look up “polemic†‘cause that’s not a word I normally use 🙂 ) because there are rules that must be followed that allow one to render it as pluperfect.

Chapter 5 in Bergen’s book is all about the rules and is sub-named The Problem of “unmarked Temporal Overlay†and the Pluperfect/Nonsequential wayyiqtol.  In this chapter they go through examples of marked and unmarked overlays and explain what they are.  As far as the limiting factors go concerning this usage, they say “So we have extrabiblical attestation, motivation, and a hypothesis about a limiting definition.â€Â  After all the examples they give of the marked and unmarked overlays, they bring up Genesis 2 as a “nice test problemâ€.  They mention that the NIV has invoked a pluperfect wayyiqtol rule for verses 8 and 19 and they ask if these two verses meet the criteria for unmarked temporal overlay.  The answer, they say, is simply no.  They repeat the criteria and show how it is impossible for these two verses to be pluperfect.

Now what your source does not do is to show how they have met the criteria that allows them to take an unmarked Hebrew passage and make it pluperfect.  Therefore since the criteria is not met, by proper Hebrew grammar, this book says that it must be rejected from a discourse syntax perspective as a misuse of a poorly defined older syntax.

My understanding from what I read on the second reference you gave me is that they are trying hard to give an apologetic answer to a critic who charges the bible with contradiction.  However they do not have to use improper Hebrew grammar to defend the charge against the bible.  The option that they didn’t even consider clearly answers the charge of contradiction by the skeptic.  The answer is that the bible just means what it says and there were two separate and different creations of animals just as there were two separate and different creations of humans.

Let’s look at it this way.  If someone asked you how mankind was created and you said that mankind was created from the dust of the earth, the skeptic could also charge the bible (and you) with a contradiction.  After all, Eve was not created from the dust of the earth and she is part of mankind too, right?  The fact is that God chose to create the man from the dirt and he chose to create the woman from the man’s flesh.  No contradiction at all.

Now what about animals?  Were animals created at the spoken word of God or were they formed from the ground?  There is no contradiction at all.  The first set of animals God spoke into existence and the second set he formed from the ground.

You said: “Finally, one other observation. As I looked through the sites there were two types of sites that most adamantly subscribed to the perfect tense: Atheists and YECs. It appears to me that the first do so because atheists wish to discredit Christianity by showing “errors†in the bible and the second to discredit science.â€

I have a very different way of looking at people’s challenges.  I try really hard not to judge the heart and people’s motives because frankly unless they tell me their motives, I’m not very good at reading hearts.  When I see someone (a skeptic) challenge the bible, I have no problem with that at all if they are a truth lover.  If I wasn’t a Christian and I saw what I thought were contradictions, I would want these contradictions answered too so that I could have faith in God and his word.  When I give a person reasonable, rational and factual answers to their objections and they accept what I say, then I can say that they appear to be a truth lover even if they are a skeptic.  If a person challenges the bible and they are given good reasons to understand that their challenge is unjustified and they disregard evidence time after time again and they just keep on throwing “dirt†in my face, I will walk away because I feel that my time is wasted.  But someone who is a truth lover who will actually hear and listen and consider the evidence is worth spending all the time it takes to answer their questions.

So having said that I don’t try to judge motives unless the motive is stated and obvious without me having to read someone’s heart, I don’t think that just because someone disagrees with you that we should judge them as having a bad or ulterior motive.  As far as the Hebrew book I have, it is written regarding Hebrew grammar not biblical interpretation so I do not know whether the writer is a young earth creationist or an old earth one.  There is certainly nothing in the passage on Genesis that would tell me either way.  There is also not one thing that I have read in this book that even attempts to discredit science. All there is, is an appeal to proper grammar and proper criteria for the rules of grammar.  I can accept that.

Lastly, you also said: “I have yet to find one resource that argues for the perfect before the late 20th Century. I am not leveling this charge at you but I am wondering about the sources you may be using.â€

The refining of the Hebrew rules of syntax is an on-going work.  The first chapter in Bergen’s book explains the problems that Christians have had with the Hebrew language since Christian scholars of the Reformation began studying Hebrew with vigor.  As a result, Jewish scholars lost interest in Biblical Hebrew grammar and the Biblical Hebrew grammar was cut off from its only “living†tradition, namely the tradition that survived Rabbinic circles.  However since the 1970’s many Biblical Hebrew grammarians have pushed on to deal with the shortcomings of the traditional Biblical Hebrew grammars and lexica.  Since the 1970’s then, the research in Biblical Hebrew grammar and lexicography has flourished.  This has resulted in a sharpening of the grammar and a better understanding of the Hebrew.  As biblical interpretation has been sharpened through the years and we have much less perceived “contradictions†in the biblical text than we did 50 years ago, so too the grammar has sharpened through the years.

Now one thing that you can’t fault me for is being biased regarding Genesis 2:19 because of trying to contradict the old earth view.  When I first came across this passage in detail it was during my search on the women’s issue and I came to Genesis from Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:13, 14.  Paul makes a big deal about Adam’s first creation and that he, as the first one created was not the one deceived.  So I trotted on back to Genesis to keep my nose in that section until I could understand why Paul said that the first created one was not deceived.  I went over and over it and read the Hebrew until my eyes popped open with surprise.  I clearly saw what Paul was referencing about creation because truly the first created one who had creation happen after him was uniquely educated in the understanding of the Creator and the vast difference between those created from the dirt (himself included) and the unique One who is the only creator.  Adam was not deceived because he saw God’s works and knew who God was and he understood what a piece of dirt he (Adam) really was.  Was it a problem that Adam was not deceived?  Absolutely not!

Now I never want to come to scripture and say it can’t be true because of my own bias.  I want to keep scripture as my infallible guide and my own reasoning as limited and flexible to change when I see truth.  Now I want to challenge you to look carefully at scripture and see if you can find a way to make your old earth view fit with a second set of the same animals that God created before Adam, created again after Adam.  Now why can’t that fit?  Do you see any reason for it not to fit?  If you can’t make it fit, then perhaps you may want to ask yourself if you have made your own reasoning process a kind of untouchable god.  Now I am saying this in love, because I would want someone to tap me on the shoulder and say the same thing to me if I said to God he can’t do something because I don’t think he can.  You see, I can accept it either way because it doesn’t challenge my view either way.  So the way I see it, you either need to make it fit your view (shouldn’t be too hard to do that) or toss your view at the feet of Jesus and ask him to enlighten you about the way he wrote his word.  He either wrote it following the precise Hebrew rules of grammar or he didn’t.  If he didn’t write it following all the intricate rules of grammar and he got it wrong, then what else did he get wrong?