Matter or Earth?

[bizzt]

Genesis 1:2- Interesting spin that I heard from a YEC... The formless and void Earth Scripture thinking it is Matter and not the Earth? What does the Hebrew say about this? Is scripture right in what it says the Earth or could it mean something else?

[Joel Freeman]

I don't think that's right at all. It does say that the earth was formless and void.

From the JFB in e-sword.

Gen 1:2 -
the earth was without form and void — or in “confusion and emptiness,” as the words are rendered in Isa 34:11. This globe, at some undescribed period, having been convulsed and broken up, was a dark and watery waste for ages perhaps, till out of this chaotic state, the present fabric of the world was made to arise.

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

?????????? What was he thinking? Earth is made out of matter....Weird pointless argument.

[bizzt]

?????????? What was he thinking? Earth is made out of matter....Weird pointless argument.

He definately has some different Views. Here is his explaination

Is there a Hebrew word for matter? If you read, some scriptures say the earth will never pass away and then some scriptures say that the earth will be destroyed and there will be an new heaven and a new earth. Now if GOD created MATTER and calls matter in general EARTH, the likely hood is that what GOD is saying is simply that MATTER will never vanish, GOD will reshape it, reprocess it; however, like every human soul----building blocks of GOD's creation will last forever. It will never be as before GOD created. What GOD spoke into existence will always be in one form or another. The same is true of the soul. It will either exist with GOD or apart from GOD for the rest of eternity.

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

Allll righty....

[Kurieuo]

Actually this seems to be a similar concept to those who advocate the "Framework" view of creation. They generally believe in what they call a "two-register cosmology" where Genesis 1 touches on heavenly, spiritual things, as well as the physical/material. For example, they'd see the scene as set in Genesis 1:1, with "heavens" refering to the spiritual realm, and "earth" refering to our physical/material realm. From what I've read, it seems fairly consistent, but I find it a stretch to believe.

Anyway, you might want to ask the person whether they've read about the framework view of creation, as it sounds like they "may" have been influenced by it.

Kurieuo.

[kateliz]

When you read the Bible simply and plainly you easily come to conclude that the "formless and void" "earth" of Genesis 1:2 was indeed just the particles from which it was later formed into something distinguishable as a completely formed planet. The words for "formless" and "void" in the Hebrew surprisingly support this quite clearly, at least to my eyes. "Formless," according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon means, "formless, confusion, unreality, emptiness," "difficult to seize," "innane, vacuum," and in regards to the early earth as, "formlessness... of land reduced to primaeval chaos... and voidness," as regards to other things as, "nothingness, empty space," it can be "figurative of what is empty, unreal," and can also mean, "a thing of nought." Clear picture, huh? "Formless," as in has absolutely no even idea of a form. "Void," as defined by Strong's: "from an unused root (meaning to be empty); a vacuity, i.e. (superficially) an undistinguishable ruin:- emptiness, void." Eye-popping, ain't it? Turns out the crazy guy was right after all, as well as my own assumptions! And no, I don't beleive in that "two-register cosmology," and I couldn't have possibly been influenced by the "framework view of creation," having never heard anything about it! Nope, I only read the Bible as you see it on the page, and interpreted it plainly in light of scientific facts and the natural progression of the Creation account. Let's face it, there had to be some point in history, if God did use the science He created, where the earth was just particles. Why not when in Gen. 1:2?

[Mastermind]

Well, if the earth was formless and void, perhaps it is referring to the Earth at a very early stage of creation. I doubt it was a sphere from the start.

[kateliz]

Exactly. That's why it's in Gen. 1:2, the second verse. I can't tell you how pleased I was to have found the definitions to back up the science so specifically here. I'm bursting! And I can't help it! But it feels so good!