Does The English Language Ruin The Bible?

[mike the wiz 1,210]

Translating Genesis through exegesis, into something that sounds more like it was intended, has been a revelation to me. Because of presentism-fallacy, YEC organisations insist upon Usher's age for the universe and flood-date that are predicated upon modern english assumptions. This is a recent discovery I have made. This does not denigrate YECs, as a lot of their arguments for design and arguments against evolution have tremendous merit.

This is just my way of showing you how I now read Genesis after a discovery that a lot of the problems I have had with the bible, and many others have had, is because of the english language, that actually can make the bible sound almost facile, cartoonish, like a fable written by a simpleton. I never knew that the entirety of this problem was the english language itself which as one Hebrew scholar said; "destroyed" it's original meaning. I admit to my ignorance in this area, as an area of study long neglected.

The problem is that you can't convert Hebrew into english perfectly because of the differences in the languages. You have to assume a more broad interpretation based on what root words meant. But you also have to get into the mindset of what the Hebrew writers meant to convey at that time and what people living at that time would have known as to what was meant, rather than from the year of 2026. The Hebrew mindset, how they saw things, were numerically obsessed, etc.... 

Here is how I now read Genesis after some investigations of it, as it was meant to sound if it had been possible to write it in english;

(The Hebrews didn't see creation as ex-nihilo, they saw it as giving order to things that already existed so the beginning of the creation week starts a chronology because it is only then when the sun/light is created, that time has any relevance.)

"In the beginning when God was creating the heavens and the earth - the earth was in a stage of darkness and waste and God's spirit was hovering over the mayim (liquid/waters), He said, "let there be light", and there was light which in turn created the first day, being there was now an evening and a morning." (presumably a primordial sun, or even fully made)...

Then I go on to "problematic scriptures" such as talking snakes, which, incredibly, are an invention of the english and a misunderstanding about how their society used eating dust and slithering in the dust like a snake as being humbled to the lowest point. 

In english this is how we have read the serpent;

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

Now here is my rendering focused upon hebrew since a literal serpent was not necessarily intended if we look at the tri-une root word and what it expresses, if we use all three;

"Now the nachash (shining diviner/serpent) was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. (He) said to the woman,"

Quote

Ezekiel matches the "Shining" (Nachash) vocabulary with Gemstones

• The Text: "You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond..." (Ezekiel 28:13). [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Meaning: The nachash in Genesis is often pictured by modern skeptics as a slimy, green garden pest. Ezekiel's imagery shows that this being was literally adorned in brilliant, light-reflecting jewels and walked among "stones of fire". This highlights the adjective meaning of nachash: a dazzling, luminous celestial entity. [1, 2, 3, 5]

 

3. It confirms the "Divine Demotion" to the dirt

• The Text: "Your heart was proud because of your beauty... I cast you to the ground [erets]... I turned you to ashes on the earth..." (Ezekiel 28:17-18). [1, 2, 3]
• The Meaning: In Genesis, God tells the nachash it will crawl on its belly and eat dust. Ezekiel translates that geographic idiom into cosmic reality: the being was cast down as a profane thing from the mountain of God

Now if we go on to another cartoonish aspect of genesis which makes it seem like the bible is a fantasy, where angels have sex with women and get angel-babies, here is the take if we go from original Hebrew, which makes for a much better context of human punishment afterwards;

This is called the "Sethite" view of the nephilim. Look how it makes sense in context if we look at what God says in the middle;

"When humanity began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, ² the men of the godly lineage saw that the daughters of the worldly line were beautiful. And they took wives for themselves from whomever they chose, compromising their spiritual heritage for physical desire.

³ Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not struggle with humanity forever, for they are entirely flesh and mortal; their days shall be limited to one hundred and twenty years."

⁴ The violent tyrants and ruthless warlords were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—whenever the men of the godly lineage intermarried with the worldly daughters and bore children to them. These offspring became the renowned fighters of old, the infamous men of power."