 » Site Navigation | | | |  | 
11-04-2009, 09:27 PM
|  | Puritanboard Sophomore | | Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Greenville, SC
Posts: 795
Thanks: 91
Thanked 495 Times in 254 Posts
| | | Genre of Genesis 1 and Statistical Analysis
The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story
Steven Boyd from the Master's College has published some statistical analysis on the genre of Gen 1-2:3 based on verb distribution.
__________________
Charlie Johnson
Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, student
| | The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to CharlieJ For This Useful Post: | |
11-04-2009, 09:35 PM
|  | Snow Miser | | Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Memphis, TN
Posts: 3,313
Thanks: 313
Thanked 1,412 Times in 741 Posts
| |
What an interesting way to approach the problem. I was pleased to read the article, at least what I could understand. 
__________________ Andrew DeShazo
Husband of Kathryn 
Father of Phillip-Giles B. DeShazo 
Deacon
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"From out of the depth of unbroken Infinfity arose the Question, "Who am I?" And to that Question there is the answer, "I am God!" -Meher Baba, died 1969.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Christ, died 33 AD, ressurected three days later.
|
11-04-2009, 09:41 PM
|  | Puritanboard Sophomore | | Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: San Marcos, Texas
Posts: 868
Thanks: 379
Thanked 207 Times in 133 Posts
| | |
That's amazing! As an amateur linguist, I think that's one of the coolest approaches to handling this question I've ever seen. I'm such a nerd.
__________________
Austin
EE student at Texas State University
Member of Church of the Cross (PCA) in San Marcos, TX
Ps. 8:3-4 "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"
|
11-04-2009, 11:17 PM
|  | Meum cerebrum nocet | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: San Gabriel, CA
Posts: 7,493
Thanks: 1,762
Thanked 3,530 Times in 1,712 Posts
| | |
Dr. Boyd was part of the ICR "RATE" project. He carried the portfolio of biblical studies alongside the geologists, techtonics guy, and physicists. A popular version of the project, Thousands, not Billions of Years (ed. by Don de Young) features a full chapter by Dr. Boyd (somewhat longer, if memory serve me, then the article you cite).
A HIGHLY technical statistically laden (not for the faint hearted or math phobic!!!) full version of Boyd's paper appears as "Statistical Determinaton of Genre in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence for an Historical Reading of Genesis 1:1-2:3," appearing in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling, and Eugene F. Chaffin, eds.(El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research), pgs. 631-734.
That is MORE than 100 pages of technical Hebrew and statistics!!!
It is amazing reading if you are comfortable with "heteroscedasticity," "multicollinearity," "strichography," AND the "waw-perfect." He follows the "logistic regression curve" in "determining genre from the ratio of preterites to finite verbs," and calculating a 95% confidence interval.
In a conclusion that will bring tears to the eyes of many an altar call, he concludes that "With X equal to 0.654762, the vertical interval for this text (the range of probabilities for the text being a narrative) is 0.999942 ≤ P ≤ 0.999987 at a 99.5% confidence level."
__________________
Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions? | | The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to DMcFadden For This Useful Post: | |
11-05-2009, 11:35 AM
| | Meum cerebrum nocet | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: San Gabriel, CA
Posts: 7,493
Thanks: 1,762
Thanked 3,530 Times in 1,712 Posts
| |
BTW, if it was not obvious from my post, I think that most people would be better off rerading the layman's version in Thousands not Billions rather than the full scientific (and I do mean SCIENTIFIC) paper in the ICR tome. You can get it from Amazon: |
11-05-2009, 11:53 AM
|  | Puritanboard Junior | | Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Ohio
Posts: 1,812
Thanks: 248
Thanked 453 Times in 308 Posts
| | |
That is cool. There's hope for computer linguistics yet!
__________________
Jonathan
Audio Engineer
Reformed Anabaptist
Ohio
Moroni's magical glasses of proper interpretation:  |
11-05-2009, 12:04 PM
|  | Puritanboard Freshman | | Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Aledo, Illinois
Posts: 162
Thanks: 51
Thanked 68 Times in 42 Posts
| |
That was the craziest article i've ever read.
This is the ONLY part that I understood Quote:
Conclusion
The distribution of preterites to finite verbs in Hebrew narrative differs distinctly from that in Hebrew poetry. Moreover, a logistic regression model fitted to the ratio of preterites to finite verbs categorizes texts as narrative or poetry to an extraordinary level of accuracy. With its probability of virtually 1, Genesis 1:1-2:3, therefore, is a narrative, not poetry.
Three major implications from this study are (1) it is not statistically defensible to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 as poetry; (2) since Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a narrative, it should be read as other Hebrew narratives are intended to be read as a concise report of actual events, couched to convey an unmistakable theological message;13 and
(3) when this text is read as a narrative, there is only one tenable view of its plain sense: God created everything in six literal days.
| i.e., I'm on his side. Yay! The really smart numbers guy is on my team! 
__________________
Nathan Riese
Under Care, PCA
Trinity Presbyterian Church, Aledo, Illinois
Current student at MBBC
Future student of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary www.gpts.edu | |
| Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes |  Linear Mode |
Posting Rules
| You may not post new threads You may not post replies You may not post attachments You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
| | |
|
