Enhakkore needs to read that.
As I noted earlier today, I've already read it... the OP cited it last year in our ongoing discussions on this topic. Now unlike your superficial and sloppy engagements with Waltke's article, which degenerated into a personal attack on the man, here is how you properly interact with an article (numbers in brackets indicate page numbers in the published version and "ibid" means the same page as previously cited):
Poythress focuses his article on arguments
for what he calls "the initiation view" (your view) and
against what he calls "the summary view" (my view) --- he correctly identifies Waltke as having been the one to have most fully articulated the latter (98). Poythress states up front that he will "treat Genesis as a literary unity" yet this rejection of "the historical-critical tradition" (ibid) has repercussions insofar as he approaches the text far too simplistically. I agree with him that "the meaning of the text can differ from its sources" (99 note 7), but it can also be the same, which is a can of worms he doesn't want to open up because he thinks that reading verse 2 independently of verse 1 may lead one away from the idea of creation
ex nihilo (ibid). He shuts down this avenue of discussion on theological grounds, not sound methodological ones... one of many criticisms I have of this article.
Poythress then claims there are three main arguments
for the initiation view, the first of which he identifies as "cohesion between verses 1 and 2" (99). He writes:
The syntactic linkage between the two verses consists in a waw-conjunctive, which, when followed by a noun and then the main verb of the clause, customarily introduces circumstantial information. (ibid)
The problem here is that Poythress misses entirely or deliberately suppresses the fact that the
vav (waw in his parlance) at the beginning of verse 2 is
disjunctive. The latter seems more probable as I can't imagine anyone familiar with Hebrew missing it... and this syntactical element is suppressed, otherwise he would then have to acknowledge the viability of the summary view alongside his own, which is not altogether incompatible with a contrastive type of disjunction (ie. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,
but the earth was..."). So instead of wading into the grey area the syntax itself demands (which is why the NET translators acknowledge both views as syntactically
possible), he passes over it entirely and hastily concludes as follows:
The early unformed state of the earth is described by 1:2 with reference to the earth of v. 1. So 1:1 cannot be a summary. (ibid; italics in original)
Of course it can. Stating otherwise is lazy and unacceptable scholarship, pure and simple. Poythress then proceeds to his second argument
for the initiation view, which is "theological purpose" (ibid). This is not drawn from the text of Genesis itself, but is his own theological position imposed upon it. Indeed, he refers matter-of-factly to the text's "majestic monotheism" and that "there is no plurality of gods" (100). That is certainly not the conclusion of critical scholars on the religion of ancient Israel at this time... indeed, the plural "Let us make..." and "in our image, according to our likeness" in Gen 1:26 embeds the type scene of the divine council of which the Israelite deity, as the speaking subject, is presented as its head. This is an example of one of those thorny source-critical problems he would rather ignore than have to deal with since it could easily be argued that the author embraces the polytheism implied therein.
Simply
assuming (against the evidence) a monotheistic framework, Poythress claims that his deity's "comprehensive sovereignty must include the original earth... {o}therwise the earth is left as a potential
independent entity" (ibid; italics in original). This has clearly departed from an implied critique of the summary view wherein the earth is created on the third day to envisioning a planet earth, thus reflecting not only the imposition of his own theological views, but scientific ones, as well. His claim that "the summary view postulate{} that the earth and the deep are already there...is in tension with the overall theological purpose of Gen 1" (ibid) reflects the circularity of his own argument... what evidence, outside of his own theological assumptions, does he offer? None whatsoever.
The third argument Poythress offers is "narrative structure" (ibid), claiming that "the use of the Hebrew perfect tense at the commencement of a narrative normally refers to an antecedent event" (ibid) and, citing Dan 1:1 and Ezra 1:1, "reason{s} by analogy" that "Gen 1:1 describes the first event, in relation to the narrative in vv. 2-31" (101). Of course,
normally doesn't mean
always and he fails to explain why he limits "the commencement of a narrative" to the beginning of books, except perhaps to avoid having to deal with counterevidence to his claim. For example:
And it came to pass in the first month in the second year on the first of the month the tabernacle was set up. (Exod 40:17)
This follows the pattern Poythress points to, including both a temporal marker and a perfect verb, yet it is clearly a
summary of what follows in 40:18-33. The best he can assert using his examples is that Gen 1:1
could be analogous to the beginnings of Daniel and Ezra, which are not summaries, but then again a biblical author is free to start a book however he likes and there is clearly some variety here. Nothing whatsoever precludes the author from having started with a summary... and thus ends his three arguments
for the initiation view. All of them are open to criticism and collectively not persuasive... in each case Poythress can be seen suppressing important elements of the discussion that speak to the viability of the summary view.
The remainder and bulk of the article attempts to critique Waltke's article, which is too much to address in a single post so I'll have to return to this at some point... I've got a lot on my plate at the moment.
Kind regards,
Jonathan