In this short episode I discuss just some of the ways that the author of Genesis uses distinctives and differences to drive their polemical point.
For more of my content dealing with Genesis 1, please visit my collection here.
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I just sent you, on your academia.edu page, a long essay supporting the thesis: 'Genesis 1 is not a polemic contrivance, nor does it involve any such contrivance.' That essay begins as follows.
ReplyDeleteThesis: Genesis 1 is not a polemic contrivance, nor does it involve any such contrivance.
I demonstrate this thesis by a combination of various issues. Here I spell out just four of them:
(1) the nature of the historical relation between self-evident truth and error,
(2) the history of information technology,
(3) the fact that the book of Genesis is a Mosiac paper copy-collection of the some, if not all, of the original records of and by the Patriarchs,
(4) a particular subset of universal facts of natural language.
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Imagine any universally self-evident truth. Now imagine a departure from that truth that borrows from the formal representation of that truth. Such borrowing shall have some formal likeness of that truth. It often is for evil motives that this kind of borrowing is committed. For instance, it may be committed so as to better ensure that the gullible who are already familiar with that form will accept the departure in place of the truth. Such is a favorite move of anyone who tends toward being an ungodly tyrant.
But the main point here is that wickedly motivated errors begin as a departure from an originally known truth.
So, right away, Genesis 1 can reasonably be supposed not to be, nor involve, polemic contrivance. This is because of the self-evident fact that, if Genesis 1 is in any way the truth of physical cosmic origins, then it would possess the most profound possible polemic utility.
By analogy, the truth that 2+2=4 is a truth from which such errors as financial fraud are a contingent departure. And it already is clear that ANE pagan creation myths are, or involve, erroneous and wicked nonsense.