by uncle_onion 25 Replies latest jw friends
If his translation of these verses is correct, then Genesis 1:30 does not refer to the diet of animals at all,
and in fact actually teaches that God created mankind as omnivores
That is how I always understood this to mean and even read .....why else would the beasts be
mentioned along with the vegetation?
I have always believe that the animals were carnivors, only they weren't a danger to man.
JanG
Dinosaurs existed......what about them? Were all of them herbivores? Why would God create dinosaurs if he hates violence? hmm.....
"No cool quote yet. but i'll think of one soon."
Dorky, some of the dinosaurs were carnivors, some omnivors and some just ate vegetation.
We can see this in the type of teeth they have.
JanG
I got the answer to this one....
If animals werent meant to be eaten, the why the hell are they made out of meat? Some answers are that simple :)
Somtimes I eat my scabs does that make me carnivorous or a csnibal ?
Dinosaurs existed......what about them? Were all of them herbivores? Why would God create dinosaurs if he hates violence? hmm.....
Never thought of that one!
The first animals on earth killed for food. Some were vegies too. Things have just carried on the same after the extinction of the dino's and Man's creation.
[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/]
qwerty
"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
another interesting contradiction right in genesis: J tells cain that sin is 'crouching for him at the entrance' how would this have any meaning if animals did not hunt each other?
of course, the society has not been dogmatic on this issue, at least not for a long time. so youre not gonne pin them down to anything. when we got the Isaiah book, the first thing i checked was if they removed the literal fulfillment of the paradisaic vegetarian animals. it was relegated to a paragraph following the spiritual fulfillment, prefixed with an 'it seems quite likely that...' or something along those lines. you know the stuff.
mox
Hi all
" Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and every beast of the earth and every bird of the sky and every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given you, just as every green plant, for food''; and it was so.
If his translation of these verses is correct, then Genesis 1:30 does not refer to the diet of animals at all, and in fact actually teaches that God created mankind as omnivores."
Then this would contradict the scripture that says that God allowed Noah to eat the animals after the "flood"?
UO
Good point, Uncle Onion! About Noah not eating meat until after the flood. It's hard to explain away the bible, isn't it? I mean, by saying Gen 1:30 is a mistranslation?
Speaking of mistranslations, did you see the thread on Bible research on 'Jesus born of a virgin'? That is quite a mistranslation on the writer of Matthew's part!
About the animals being meant to be veggys: In order for carnivores to veggys, their digestive tracts would have to be greatly elongated in order to digest plants. It's very much shorter than herbivores'. Not to mention the rest of their anatomy such as teeth, jaws, etc.
Patio
aChristian said approximately:
Genesis 1:29 and 30 have been widely translated from their original Hebrew as follows:
29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, {I have given} every green plant for food''; and it was so.I am now in contact with a Hebrew scholar who tells me that he believes these verses are widely mistranslated. He says he believes they should be translated as follows:
29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and (to) every beast of the earth and (to) every bird of the sky and (to) every thing that moves on the earth which has life, {I have given you, just as} every green plant, for food''; and it was so.
If his translation of these verses is correct, then Genesis 1:30 does not refer to the diet of animals at all, and in fact actually teaches that God created mankind as omnivores.
That's an interesting speculation that covers one problem, but opens up another can of worms.
For one thing, it's a stretch to claim that the word "to" (which I have bolded and put in parentheses in the speculative translation) should not be there. In the original Hebrew, the phrase "and to every" is written as a compound word something like "wu-le-kol": "and-to-every". The conjunction "wu" simply means "and". The preposition "le" means "to, for, at, in regard to, with reference to". The adjective "kol" means "every, all". There are dozens of examples in the Bible where "kol" alone is properly translated as "every" or "all". There are dozens of examples where "le-kol" is properly translated as "to every" or "to all". Claiming that when the phrase "to every" occurs in particular instances, it really means just "every" -- as if the Bible writer didn't know the difference between "every" and "to every" -- requires extremely strong grammatical justification.
For example, speaking of contributions made by the Israelites to the Levites, 2 Chronicles 31:19 illustrates the usage (NLT): "... men were appointed to distribute portions to every (le-kol) male among the priests and to all (wu-le-kol) the Levites." The passage is rendered insensible by dropping the "to".
Other passages where the context obviously requires something like "to all" rather than just "all" are:
Deuteronomy 27:14
Ecclesiastes 8:9
Jeremiah 49:32
Ezekiel 5:10, 12; 12:14; 16:25; 17:21
For another thing there is the matter of complete context of Genesis 1:29, 30. From The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament (Kohlenberger) we have the literal word-for-word rendering:
(29) then-he-said God see! I-give to-you *** every-of plant seed-bearing seed which on face-of whole-of the-earth and every-of the-tree which in-it fruit-of tree seeding seed for-you he-will-be for-food (30) and-to-every-of beast-of the-earth and-to-every-of bird-of the-air and-to-every-of crawling-one on the-ground which in-him breath-of life *** every-of green plant for-food and-he-was so
Each of the above bolded uses of "kol" has "-of" tacked on the end, but that's irrelevant to our discussion.
You can see for yourself that in verse 29, "every" lacks the preposition "to", where God is giving "every" plant and tree on the "whole" earth to mankind. This giving is indicated by the "***" symbol ("'et"), which in Hebrew is the "direct object indicator" and normally precedes the direct object, and which is normally left untranslated since it is not needed in English. Now, a direct object is a word representing a person or thing upon which the action of a verb is performed. Thus in verse 29, "I give" is the verb and "every plant ..." is the direct object. Thus the structure of verse 29 is like this: "I give to you 'this, that and then some'; for you it will be for food".
Now look at verse 30. It starts off another thought with the conjunction "And": "And to every ..." It continues this way: "And to every 'this' and to every 'that' and to every 'then some'". Then comes the "direct object indicator" "'et", which separates in this case, not a verb per se, but a clause that continues the "I give" in verse 29, from the intervening list of plants to eat in verse 29. In other words, there is a direct object indicator that is not directly preceded by a verb, but by a clause that is itself preceded by a direct object indicator and a verb. Thus, verses 29 and 30 combine to give something like this: "I give to you 'various plants for food'; and 'to all the animals' ('I give' is implied) every gree plant for food."
Thus we can see that verses 29 and 30 are not only intermingled, but are parallels of one another, and that just as God gave plants to man for food, he gave plants to animals for food.
It would be instructive to see what comments your scholar can make concerning the above.
The can of worms opened by your speculative translation was touched on by another poster: If God had already given to mankind "all flesh" as food, then the statements in Genesis 9:2-4 are pointless.
These verses present a good counterpoint to your scholar's speculation as well, since here God gives "every" -- not "to every" -- living thing to mankind for food. In context, the implication is extremely clear and is as the NIV puts it in verse 3: "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." Why contrast "as green plants" with "everything" unless "everything" was a new thing?
AlanF
