# When one's interpretation conflicts with plain meaning to original audience



## au5t1n (Mar 2, 2010)

May one's position on a matter which Scripture addresses conflict with the plain meaning of the relevant Scriptural passage(s) to its original audience?

That is the general question to which I want answers here; however, if it helps, the specific issue I am pondering is young-earth creation, which is being discussed on another active thread. Given that the original audience would have understood the Genesis account to be a didactic account of historical events; and given that God knew this; does it call into question God's honesty in revelation to suppose that the plain meaning of the Genesis account to its original audience is not the correct interpretation?

I am primarily interested in the general question, but I will take answers to the specific application as well. Thank you.


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## MW (Mar 2, 2010)

The plain meaning of the Genesis account to its original audience does not require a "young earth" methodology so far as scientific inquiry is concerned. Naturalistic scientists may work with their data and arrive at views which are at variance with the Bible; their conclusions may even be regarded as valid so far as their field of expertise is concerned. This should not be used to alter the biblical message or its supernaturalistic worldview.


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## au5t1n (Mar 2, 2010)

armourbearer said:


> The plain meaning of the Genesis account to its original audience does not require a "young earth" methodology so far as scientific inquiry is concerned. Naturalistic scientists may work with their data and arrive at views which are at variance with the Bible; their conclusions may even be regarded as valid so far as their field of expertise is concerned. This should not be used to alter the biblical message or its supernaturalistic worldview.


 
What do you mean that views which are at variance with the Bible may be valid as far as their field of expertise is concerned? I am having trouble understanding your point.


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## MW (Mar 2, 2010)

austinww said:


> What do you mean that views which are at variance with the Bible may be valid as far as their field of expertise is concerned? I am having trouble understanding your point.


 
How do you measure a miracle? Take any divine working as described by the Bible and the man of science should be able to tell you what would have been required to have made the event take place according to "nature." They are speaking truly from their perspective, and their perspective allows us to wonder all the more at the work which God has performed.


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## au5t1n (Mar 2, 2010)

armourbearer said:


> austinww said:
> 
> 
> > What do you mean that views which are at variance with the Bible may be valid as far as their field of expertise is concerned? I am having trouble understanding your point.
> ...



Oh, I see. Thank you.


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## jayce475 (Mar 3, 2010)

armourbearer said:


> austinww said:
> 
> 
> > What do you mean that views which are at variance with the Bible may be valid as far as their field of expertise is concerned? I am having trouble understanding your point.
> ...


 
Rev Winzer, so do you take a YEC view on the basis that it is the plain meaning of the bible?


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## Jon Peters (Mar 3, 2010)

austinww said:


> Given that the original audience would have understood the Genesis account to be a didactic account of historical events; and given that God knew this; does it call into question God's honesty in revelation to suppose that the plain meaning of the Genesis account to its original audience is not the correct interpretation?


 
Doesn't his sort of beg the question? I recommend an article of Mark Futato called Because It Had Rained. I think he makes some interesting points about the intent of the creation narrative.

Part One: http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/92974~9_27_99_7-13-34_PM~TH.Futato.Rained.1.pdf

Part Two: http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/79611~10_4_99_5-20-49_PM~TH.Futato.Rained.2.pdf


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## au5t1n (Mar 3, 2010)

It begs a question that I consider to have a clear answer. Do you contest that, when Moses delivered the account to the Israelites, they would have recognized it as a straightforward account of the actual course of events? I mean no offense - I have been old earth before- but I think to hold an OEC position is to cast doubt on God's honesty in divine revelation, given that he knew what the plain meaning of the passage would be not only to the original hearers and readers, but also to the majority of readers since that time over the millennia.

Also, how would you answer the first, more general question?

Thanks for the articles. I read a few pages and will finish reading them when I am not on my iPod.


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## JBaldwin (Mar 3, 2010)

austinww said:


> It begs a question that I consider to have a clear answer. Do you contest that, when Moses delivered the account to the Israelites, they would have recognized it as a straightforward account of the actual course of events? I mean no offense - I have been old earth before- but I think to hold an OEC position is to cast doubt on God's honesty in divine revelation, given that he knew what the plain meaning of the passage would be not only to the original hearers and readers, but also to the majority of readers since that time over the millennia.
> 
> Also, how would you answer the first, more general question?
> 
> Thanks for the articles. I read a few pages and will finish reading them when I am not on my iPod.


 
This has always been my contention. God knew the controversies that would arise in our era. I find it interesting that the day is defined clearly as "evening and morning" (as the Israelites would have defined a 24-hour day). To me, to argue against anything but an "evening and morning" as a 24-hour day would be to say that God was secretly trying to deceive us about how it long took Him to create the earth.


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## Jon Peters (Mar 3, 2010)

austinww said:


> It begs a question that I consider to have a clear answer. Do you contest that, when Moses delivered the account to the Israelites, they would have recognized it as a straightforward account of the actual course of events? I mean no offense - I have been old earth before- but I think to hold an OEC position is to cast doubt on God's honesty in divine revelation, given that he knew what the plain meaning of the passage would be not only to the original hearers and readers, but also to the majority of readers since that time over the millennia.
> 
> Also, how would you answer the first, more general question?
> 
> Thanks for the articles. I read a few pages and will finish reading them when I am not on my iPod.



No offense taken. I understand that many, perhaps most, on this board consider your view to be the "clear" view. However, I would be inconsistent if my view of the narrative violated the Lord's intended meaning. So, no, I don't think the original audience understood the passage in the same way that you do. I also don't believe that all of them to an equal degree understood the theological thrust of the passage. That was my point in posting the papers by Prof. Futato. 

We tend to read our debates into the understanding of the original audience. I would contend that the primary purpose of the passage was not to give instruction as to the timing of the creation nor did original audience receive it as such.

In answer to the first question, I would say that our understanding of the passage should not be in conflict with how the passage was received or how it was intended to be received by the Lord. However, man does err in his understanding and I would venture to guess that many of the original audience missed the meaning of the passage. This is amply illustrated by Christ's audience continual misunderstanding of his words.

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JBaldwin said:


> austinww said:
> 
> 
> > It begs a question that I consider to have a clear answer. Do you contest that, when Moses delivered the account to the Israelites, they would have recognized it as a straightforward account of the actual course of events? I mean no offense - I have been old earth before- but I think to hold an OEC position is to cast doubt on God's honesty in divine revelation, given that he knew what the plain meaning of the passage would be not only to the original hearers and readers, but also to the majority of readers since that time over the millennia.
> ...


 
I can only answer for my own view and understanding, but the framework view doesn't teach that "day" is anything other than an ordinary day. See Lee Irons answer to the 24-hour view in the book The Genesis Debate.


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## MW (Mar 3, 2010)

jayce475 said:


> Rev Winzer, so do you take a YEC view on the basis that it is the plain meaning of the bible?


 
I would simply say that the Bible teaches a literal six day creation and provides literal genealogies which amount to a young age for creation.


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## jayce475 (Mar 3, 2010)

armourbearer said:


> jayce475 said:
> 
> 
> > Rev Winzer, so do you take a YEC view on the basis that it is the plain meaning of the bible?
> ...


 
Agree. So is it heretical for some to teach that Genesis 1 and 2 are allegorical?


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## MW (Mar 3, 2010)

jayce475 said:


> Agree. So is it heretical for some to teach that Genesis 1 and 2 are allegorical?


 
I don't think "heretical" would be the way to describe it, but a failure to accept as historical what Scripture itself regards as historical (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:6) is erroneous and dangerous.


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## Willem van Oranje (Mar 20, 2010)

If Genesis 1, 2 be not an accurate historical account of the creation, where else are we supposed to find out about creation? I contend that there is no other source of information available to us about creation outside of Genesis 1, 2. And it is important for us to know our origin.


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## lynnie (Mar 20, 2010)

_does it call into question God's honesty in revelation to suppose that the plain meaning of the Genesis account to its original audience is not the correct interpretation?_

austin, I've said this before here and I'll say it again, BB Warfield was one of the greatest theologians who ever lived and he was deceived by Darwin, back in the days before they knew the "simple cell" was more like 300 factories inside a wall, and evolution wasn't shown as the fraud that it is by modern microbiology and statistics. And if BB was able to worm his way around what seems to be clear biblical history, and not allegory or metaphore or parable, you probably won't get anywhere with this. Just saying, being as hub went to WTS and we know lots of WTS people, and you can't fight BB Warfield. You are right, but its sort of like fighting an appeal to Calvin or Owen or the confessions, people don't budge. Nice try 



Willem van Oranje said:


> If Genesis 1, 2 be not an accurate historical account of the creation, where else are we supposed to find out about creation? I contend that there is no other source of information available to us about creation outside of Genesis 1, 2. And it is important for us to know our origin.



You find out from math. The mathematical model is as follows:

See this little dot? . 

Billions of years ago ALL the matter in the entire universe emerged from/through a spot of infinite density smaller than the the size of that dot, called a singularity. It was so dense that the laws of physics did not apply. 

This is science and math, not religious faith. Genesis is religious faith, not science.

Hope that helps.


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## au5t1n (Mar 20, 2010)

Lynnie, I have seen you mention Warfield on this subject before; and while I respect Warfield, I would submit to you that his beliefs do not affect in the slightest what the plain meaning of the passage is, nor do his beliefs change the fact that questioning the historical accuracy of the Genesis account calls into doubt (unintentionally, I am sure) God's honesty in revealing things to his people.


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## lynnie (Mar 21, 2010)

austinww said:


> Lynnie, I have seen you mention Warfield on this subject before; and while I respect Warfield, I would submit to you that his beliefs do not affect in the slightest what the plain meaning of the passage is, nor do his beliefs change the fact that questioning the historical accuracy of the Genesis account calls into doubt (unintentionally, I am sure) God's honesty in revealing things to his people.



Austin, I agree with you, I just want you to realize what you are up against. It isn't liberals questioning inerrancy, it is a stalwart, brilliant, defender of the faith, who would never have questioned God's honesty. And there is a long chain of his theological descendants out there.


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## EricP (Mar 22, 2010)

I'm no exegete, and Futato's stuff makes my old eyes cross, but I might suggest caution with phrases like: "the original audience would have understood the Genesis account to be a didactic account of historical events". I've been through enough seminary classes to know how important "original audience" is, and how easy it seems for us moderns to have correct ideas not only about what original audiences thought, but what they had for breakfast 4000 years ago. Seriously, we have no earthly idea of how listeners 4000 years ago would have understood Moses' account of God's revelation. Small example from my experience (and I do not intend this as an exhaustive cross-cultural bit of research): I had the opportunity during Desert Shield/Storm to do some little medical exercises with bedouin tribesmen in some of the Emirates; great people, a lot of Toyota pick up trucks. In doing the medical thing (asking questions of a historical nature as we Americans tend to do) it became clear that they had a completely different attitude toward time than we did--as best I as a westerner could understand, they really didn't mark time much at all: they would try to in essence make up answers to our "when did such and such happen" questions (classic was a young lady with a median sternotomy scar, presumably from valve replacement surgery--she neither knew nor cared when the surgery occurred; it had happened, that was the important issue) because they could tell an answer was important to us. At times it was a source of frustration to them--a woman with a headache, it seemed, didn't have the headache now; the fact was she'd had a headache, and that was the important fact, not when it had happened. In short, they did not seem to have much concern about dividing up time the way we western folks did, and it wasn't "dry season, wet season" stuff--time was almost like a continuum for them, with little addition of arbitrary subdivisions. I am not offering this as some sort of explanation of the timing of the Genesis creation account, but only to suggest that it is possible that a nomadic desert-wandering listener to the Genesis account a few thousand years ago may not have heard it as a minute by minute, blow by blow "historical" account proper for an encyclopedia: they frankly may not have cared at all. The important thing to them may just have been that God created!


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## jayce475 (Mar 23, 2010)

lynnie said:


> austinww said:
> 
> 
> > Lynnie, I have seen you mention Warfield on this subject before; and while I respect Warfield, I would submit to you that his beliefs do not affect in the slightest what the plain meaning of the passage is, nor do his beliefs change the fact that questioning the historical accuracy of the Genesis account calls into doubt (unintentionally, I am sure) God's honesty in revealing things to his people.
> ...


 
Paul writes "yea, let God be true, but every man a liar". Reputation counts for naught.


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## au5t1n (Mar 23, 2010)

So when Gen. 1:13 says, "And the evening and the morning were the third day," they would have thought, "Third day? What's that? I have no concept of that"?


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## EricP (Mar 23, 2010)

I'm suggesting some room between a "concept" of a third day and "didactic account of historical events". As an electrical engineering student your idea of a minute may be different from a musician's, or from an Aboriginal tribesman's. Some folks I believe do think in terms of specific time relationships, others are far more relative; Americans are people of days, hours, seconds, and nanoseconds; our forebears 200 years ago were likely more seasonal (planting, harvesting, etc) having never heard of processor clocks and nanoseconds. Either way, God as the spiritual being who created and is above (and so not affected by) time has had to communicate with us in temporal terms we can understand, since none but the Trinity was in on the creation. 
Without being relativistic, my real point is to raise a small cautionary flag in the process of divining "plain meaning to original audience"--in many ways we 21st century dwellers may get off onto wrong tracks (and I personally get some of this in Wright's NPP) by believing so strongly, based on our 20-21st century educations and perspectives, that we can know precisely what "yom" meant to Moses (and so call into question "God's honesty in revelation") just as much as we can know precisely what kind of Pharisee Paul was and so divine what he really meant by justification. I think that's what CS Lewis meant (paraphrasing) when he humorously suggested that any time he read a book written in the past century his next two would be hundreds of years older, to help cleanse his mind of the "current thought".


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## au5t1n (Mar 23, 2010)

EricP said:


> I'm suggesting some room between a "concept" of a third day and "didactic account of historical events". As an electrical engineering student your idea of a minute may be different from a musician's, or from an Aboriginal tribesman's.



Well, I am also a musician, though admittedly I am not an Aboriginal tribesman. 



EricP said:


> Some folks I believe do think in terms of specific time relationships, others are far more relative; Americans are people of days, hours, seconds, and nanoseconds; our forebears 200 years ago were likely more seasonal (planting, harvesting, etc) having never heard of processor clocks and nanoseconds. Either way, God as the spiritual being who created and is above (and so not affected by) time has had to communicate with us in temporal terms we can understand, since none but the Trinity was in on the creation.



I still don't see how they would have read "There was evening, then there was morning" (paraphrasing) as anything but "There was evening, then there was morning." They certainly had a concept of sunset and sunrise - in fact, more so than we do because in the absence of clocks and watches, the sun was their gauge of time.

Moreover, why do we not find all these old earth views a couple millennia back? Why do they conveniently crop up only in the last couple centuries when a certain scientific view becomes popular? Could it be that rather than accounting for different cultural treatment of time, the OEC view really only reads itself into the text and then appeals to the lack of watches as an excuse?

I understand that you are just cautioning here and not advocating anything in particular, but I'm still not convinced that "plain meaning" is not a fair assessment on my part for the young earth view.


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## EricP (Mar 23, 2010)

Good points all! And you're exactly right--all I'm suggesting is caution, particularly when discussing/witnessing to non-believers (I was raised as an atheistic Darwinist who believed nothing but evolution and big bang) and OEC folks. Old earth seems to come up as a middle view, trying to placate (for lack of a better word) those who have a fondness for some kind of scientific materialism while believing in Creation and Christianity. While my old chemistry friends may laugh at me now, I've come to put more stock in Scripture than carbon dating.


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## rpavich (Mar 28, 2010)

I agree with the poster who noticed that the idea that there is something other than a YEC came about from ideas that are *outside* the bible and then are *brought in. *People then try and blend or shoehorn the ideas into scripture.

The funniest thing is this; anytime the exact same word for day is used anywhere else in scripture, nobody even gives it a second thought...(how long did Joshua march around the city walls of Jericho? 7 days or 7 million years?)

Only in Genesis does this happen....and it's from secular ideas being brought into the bible.


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## Peairtach (Apr 9, 2010)

JBaldwin said:


> austinww said:
> 
> 
> > It begs a question that I consider to have a clear answer. Do you contest that, when Moses delivered the account to the Israelites, they would have recognized it as a straightforward account of the actual course of events? I mean no offense - I have been old earth before- but I think to hold an OEC position is to cast doubt on God's honesty in divine revelation, given that he knew what the plain meaning of the passage would be not only to the original hearers and readers, but also to the majority of readers since that time over the millennia.
> ...



I find the fact that God created day and night on Day One, i.e. He first created days so He could create on Six Days, as telling against a metaphorical view of the Six Days.

On the supposedly metaphorical Day One, is God creating metaphorical or literal Days? According to any metaphorical view of the Days, we would have to say that on the metaphorical Day One, God created metaphorical Days. 

This seems at best distinctly odd, and at worst downright puzzling! It involves creating a metaphor (the Creation Days), on a metaphor (Day One of the Creation Days). I don't know what kind of literature that is.


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