Jeff: OK. But the option I posted is consistent with that, isn't it?

Tom: Not really. At the end of verse 7 ("for I regret that I made them") the verbs are definitely past tense--nichamti (I grieved) and 'asaitim (I made them).

Tom

So if the Hebrew language doesn't have past, present, and future tenses, and, yet, conveys all three of these tenses SOMEHOW, how does it do that? Is it context?  Or what?

Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/4/2005 6:52:20 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 9/4/2005 9:45:32 PM (GMT-5)

Yo Mephi-

If all I had was Gen. 6.1-7, sure, I’d probably be inclined to assume that God’s really “regretted” in the sense you mean. But we don’t have only these verses to go by in determining what the author’s point was. We have the earlier chapters, verbal parallels, etc. So while we might justify a possible reading based on the author’s having written JUST these verses, we can’t suppose the author just wrote these verses. He wrote more and was up to more.

But that God can truly regretted having made his own past choices isn’t the only thing I’d assume about God if all I was reading was ch. 6. I’d also be stunned to discover that a God who regrets his choices learns so little from regretting that he immediately repeats his mistakes. So the author must have believed God was like the Greek gods, somewhat slow, capable of being deceived, given to uncontrolled passions, and a bit slow on the uptake. This all HAS to be entailed in God’s truly regretting having created at all. And THEN I’d have to say the author had a fundamentally skewed view of God and that I’d be just as likely to find out the truth about God from Greek authors talking about Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon.

I’m appealing to your ENFJ ‘consistency’ and trying to convince you that it’s a less consistent hermeneutic to assume that a verse most like means what it seems to mean when you disregard the wider context and take the verse on its own. It’s more consistent to assume that the verse most likely means what an author having just composed chapters 1-5 would mean.

And I totally admit that I come to these chapters with Exodus through Revelation in my head and heart AND feeling very constrained (though not entirely determined) by my belief that God is the greatest possible being in the universe and the philosophical arguments about what sort of knowledge is a great-making property.

Pancakes are on the table! Gotta go.

Tom

Mephi: Yes, this God created heaven and earth from his word, which is huge and testifies to God's great wisdom. But this is NOT omniscience, in and of itself. And you wouldn't get the idea of omniscience from Gen 1-6.

Tom: True. The author doesn’t anywhere actually argue FOR infinite intelligence. But he doesn’t actually deny it either. The way v. 6 is worded seems to be compatible with either, though I think the beliefs we have to assume he had if he believed what he wrote about creation make his also believing God was a bit of a dunce highly unlikely, so much so that you’ll have to argue on independent grounds that it’s likely he (and the author of 1Sam AND the author of Jeremiah) held such a view about God.

Mephi: Also, you are reading in that the author of Genesis may IN NO WAY have believed that God regrets his choices, makes adjustments that God feels would be appropriate. YOU feel that this God would be a stupid one...but somehow you read THAT IMPRESSION back into the head of the author.

Tom: Ignorance is required of regretting one’s own choices. I’m reading that definition into the text, yes, because it’s independently true and has to brought to the text. If God truly regrets his own choices, he can’t also be thought of as having foreseen and adequately evaluated the choice he’s now regretting. So some ignorance is required to regret. Now, I don’t think I need to assume that the author believed God was omniscient in order to read the author in a way that’s consistent with God’s being omniscient (or the author’s believing God was omniscient). In other words, I’m not trying to PROVE from Genesis that God is omniscient. I’m trying to show that the author’s meaning doesn’t exclude God’s being omniscient. That’s different, and a much easier thing to do.

Mephi: You don't know that the author would feel that way. Why do you do that? You have no exegetical reason to do so. It's an assumption that YOU have. You're doing just what all the other people do...and you say it.

Tom: Ouch! OK, it seems to me Mephi that the author's words really can, given the context, be understood the way I’m suggesting and that without having to stretch words and meaning to the nth degree either. It’s not remotely plausible. It’s plainly plausible. So how is my choosing to go with a contextual reading of the author that’s consistent with omniscience a totally unjustified reading into the text of my presuppositions while yours is JUST reading the author at face value?

Mephi: I know, to some extent, we must do this...but the way you're doing it seems a lot like eisegesis straight up. You basically say...I refuse to believe that the author(s?) of Genesis would believe that God was so stupid and slow.

Tom: It’s only eisegesis if there’s NO evidence whatsoever from Genesis that the author held to a view of God which would make it unlikely that he also believed God was stupid and slow. I do think it unreasonable to suppose that the author believed God knowledgeable and wise enough to imagine this world in all its complexity and order and also to suppose him capable of the sort of bad judgment calls that true regret of the choice to create entails. I don’t think that’s eisegesis though because I’m assuming it based on what seems to be true about the author given what the author’s own assumptions must be.

Mephi: Do you not see your own biases very clearly here? And these biases are influencing your interpretation.

Tom: How could you think I don’t recognize my own presuppositions when I started out by admitting them up front? Sure, I have them. We all do. My point is, a case can be made from the text that 6.6-7 be interpreted on nothing but what seems to be the case about the authors assumptions which allows for a reading of vv. 6-6 that’s consistent with God’s being omniscient. So I have the presuppositions, but they’re not what’s driving HOW I read the text. They’re there. But they’re not shutting the author down. And that's the best any of us can hope to accomplish when we read.

Mephi: Just ask yourself: Is it POSSIBLE that the author(s) could have genuinely believed that God made a choice that he regretted.

Tom: The grammar of v. 6 allows it, but it doesn’t demand it I don't think. So what decides? I say, CONTEXT. And given the wider context, I honestly find it difficult (given the author’s own assumptions about God’s imaginative and creative powers) to believe he thought God capable of repeated ill-informed choices and bad judgment calls.

More later. Gotta run.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 9/5/2005 11:44:24 AM (GMT-5)

Take Jer. 42.1-10 as an example, Mephi.

Jeremiah 42 Then all the army officers, including Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached  ² Jeremiah the prophet and said to him, Please hear our petition and pray to the LORD your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. ³ Pray that the LORD your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do. ⁴ I have heard you, replied Jeremiah the prophet. I will certainly pray to the LORD your God as you have requested; I will tell you everything the LORD says and will keep nothing back from you. ⁵ Then they said to Jeremiah, May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with everything the LORD your God sends you to tell us. ⁶ Whether it is favourable or unfavourable, we will obey the LORD our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the LORD our God. ⁷ Ten days later the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah. ⁸ So he called together Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers who were with him and all the people from the least to the greatest. ⁹ He said to them, This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition, says: ¹⁰ 'If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I am grieved over the disaster I have inflicted on you.”

Now, it doesn’t seem to me that Jeremiah is best understood as believing God actually regretted “having judged” Israel as he in fact did, that God actually wishes he had let Israel go on sinning without consequence. It seems more consistent to read Jeremiah as saying God’s grief over Israel’s suffering (although brought on by God as a just consequence of their sin) is something God does not wish to repeat, that though given the circumstances under which he grieved made grieving unavoidable, God will again do all he can to avoid such judgment, for it truly grieves him. Thus, God grieves having judged, and this grief figures into a new future.

In my view, if you opt for insisting on here what you do in Gen. 6, you necessarily get God promising to plant Israel in the land unconditionally, inviting Israel to sin with impunity. That’s where the “regret” reading here would take you.

Tom

Meph: And I don't see ANYTHING in Gen 1-5 that mandates that this cannot be possible for God.  I'd need for you to show me how you inferred the authors presuppositions.

Tom: It’s only eisegesis if there’s NO evidence whatsoever from Genesis that the author held to a view of God which would make it unlikely that he also believed God was stupid and slow. I do think it unreasonable to suppose that the author believed God knowledgeable and wise enough to imagine this world in all its complexity and order and also to suppose him capable of the sort of bad judgment calls that true regret of the choice to create entails.

Jeff:  Not only is Meph right because of my analogy about the car engineer earlier in this thread, but the FLOOD is the elephant in the living room.  THE FLOOD is an ACT of POWERFUL INTERVENTION.  It is an ACT that God exercises BECAUSE the BOUNDARY of tolerance (or risk, if you will) has been REACHED.  And THAT is why the idea of ACCEPTABLE risk is not in the context of "REPENTED," at all.  Contextually, God's FLOOD is portrayed as being due to what DID happen, not what was ANTICIPATED.

To put it another way, we know, by analogy, that when someone designs something, the specifications of the design are based upon anticipated possibilites.  But when the designer has to INTERVENE in a radically abrupt manner to "save" his creation from destruction, it can be reasonably inferred that whatever necessitated THAT intervention was NOT anticipated in the design specifications.  And THAT is why Meph seems ABSOLUTELY right, to me.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/5/2005 1:35:49 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/5/2005 8:01:47 PM (GMT-5)

Meph: And I don't see ANYTHING in Gen 1-5 that mandates that this cannot be possible for God. I'd need for you to show me how you inferred the author’s presuppositions.

Tom: It’s only eisegesis if there’s NO evidence whatsoever from Genesis that the author held to a view of God which would make it unlikely that he also believed God was stupid and slow. I do think it unreasonable to suppose that the author believed God knowledgeable and wise enough to imagine this world in all its complexity and order and also to suppose him capable of the sort of bad judgment calls that true regret of the choice to create entails.

Jeff:  Not only is Meph right because of my analogy about the car engineer earlier in this thread, but the FLOOD is the elephant in the living room.  THE FLOOD is an ACT of POWERFUL INTERVENTION.  It is an ACT that God exercises BECAUSE the BOUNDARY of tolerance (or risk, if you will) has been REACHED.  And THAT is why the idea of ACCEPTABLE risk is not in the context of "REPENTED," at all.  Contextually, God's FLOOD is portrayed as being due to what DID happen, not what was ANTICIPATED.

Tom: I’m comfortable right where my red comments are. (1) Jeff, the reason Mephi and I are talking about “acceptable risk” is because if God is truly “regretting having created humankind, period” then this entails God’s concluding his having created is now unacceptable to him. He wishes he hadn’t done it. That’s what “regret” means, and as far as I understand “regret” I think it amounts to concluding that the choice you made that got you to this point was an unacceptable risk. (2) Mephi and Jeff, you just keep translating “nicham” here as “regret” without argument. What I’m seeing more now is that “nicham” doesn’t necessarily entail that specific emotion. Grief, yes. And grief in some circumstances IS synonymous to regret. But not in all circumstances. One can grieve without regretting. So if I’m bifurcating “grief” and “regret,” that’s because they’re in fact NOT synonymous. You can’t just assume they shouldn’t be bifurcated. One has to appeal to context to see what’s up.

Jeff: To put it another way, we know, by analogy, that when someone designs something, the specifications of the design are based upon anticipated possibilites. But when the designer has to INTERVENE in a radically abrupt manner to "save" his creation from destruction, it can be reasonably inferred that whatever necessitated THAT intervention was NOT anticipated in the design specifications. And THAT is why Meph seems ABSOLUTELY right, to me.

Tom: If that’s the author’s meaning, then Mephi DISAGREES with the author, since Mephi believes God incapable of such regret, as do I. But drastic intervention IS consistent with a fully anticipated and acceptable risk if the purposes for designing things in such an open fashion require it. But more importantly, Jeff, the SAME Genesis 6 language is repeated in 1Sam. 15.11 and Jer. 42.10 and other passages where there is no “radical intervention to save creation from destruction.” Dismissing Saul as king for lack of integrity can hardly be a radical measure God takes to save the nation because he failed to anticipate Saul’s not following orders. If your analogy is right, then from where I stand God really IS a nitwit, a total nincompoop, a very powerful one yes, but a nincumpoop nonetheless. I honestly can't imagine divine sensabilities being such that God's nature ruled out his foreknowing the possibility that Saul wouldn't work out. But yet the same language of Gen. 6 is used in regard Saul, where no countermeausures (like shortening human lifespans in Genesis) are taken. Nothing new is put in place with Saul (or with Israel in Jer. 42). God just picks up and starts over again facing EXACTLY the same risks. That's the problem with your argument (from my view). See, if the same LANGUAGE (viz., divine grief "ki" some previous choice of God) that's used in Gen. 6 with the flood is also used in contexts where there is no radical intervention taken by God, then God's wiping humanity out with a flood in Gen. 6 cannot--cannot--constrain our interpretation of the language in Gen. 6. So there's a flood. So what? That can't be what explains the language of divine grief since the same grief is used to describe God in circumstances where nothing dramatic is done by God and no adjustments made in his plans.

Keith: This is what I've been saying all along, more so from a deductive process: If God is omniscient, he can't create without possibly knowing all potentials of evils that mortal and finite humanity could bring about.

Tom: Right. IF God is omniscient. But that’s what’s at issue, since the verse CAN be read in a way that rules out omniscience. So we’re trying to interpret the language and context of Gen. 6 (and the other passages like it) in a way that’s leaves omniscience in tack without simply assuming that God is omniscient and then forcing the author of Gen. into that. See the difference?

Tom