0025 What is proposition three?

Genesis 1 concerns functional origins, not material origins.

0026 Positivists expropriate plain-speaking interpretations, the way of the Reformation.  A plain-speaking interpretation must now be a materialist one.

I reply, “Scientific accounts are based on phenomena.  Functional accounts address noumena.  The entrance point to noumena, for Greek natural philosophy, is the actuality of the hylomorphe.”

0027 Here is a picture.

0028 Proposition three instructs me to consider the six days of creation in terms of hylomorphes.

0029 The first three days entail separation.  Separation establishes order and function.

0030 For day one, the light and darkness (esse_ce) separate, yielding day and night (essence).

0031 Following the path established in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, this actuality₂ calls for a corresponding normal context₃ and potential₁.

Here is a picture.

0031 The triadic normal context of day one₃ brings the dyadic actuality of light & dark [substantiates] day & night₂ into relation with the monadic possibility of ‘something’₁.

According to Walton, ‘something’₁ is the role and function of time.

0032 The second day portrays a second separation.  The waters above and the waters below separate, yielding the vault of the heavens, explicitly, and the location of the witness, on the other.

0033 Day Two₃ is the normal conext₃.

‘Something’₁, according to Walton, is a living space for all creatures₁.

Other words for ‘something₁‘ are here, home and weather.

0034 The third day presents a third separation and a first constitution.  The land separates from the seas.  The hylomorphe is redundant.  Land, sea [substantiate] land, sea.

Then, vegetative life appears.

0035 Day three₃ is the normal context₃.

‘Somelthing’₁ includes all types of plants, especially familiar ones, as fondly described in detail in the Genesis text.  Plants are food.

0036 Walton concludes that days one, two and three identify major features of human experience: time, weather and food.

Days four through six describe what happens next.

0037 In day four, God places luminaries in the heavens.

0038 In the normal context of day four₃, these celestials signs have roles and functions₁ that pertain to time (the potential₁for day one₃).

Day five portrays animal life in the sea and expands from there.

0039 In the normal context of day five₃, aquatic life is available for food₁.  It is not life that humans can sympathize with.  Fish are very different from humans.

0040 Land animal life appears in day six.

Indeed, humans are created towards the end day six.

No creature is more familiar to humans than humans.

0041 Surely, the Creation Story does not detail the phenomena of creation (that is, the stuff that science is interested in).

Rather, the Creation Story portrays the noumena of creation (and that is very curious, because it reads like an evolutionary scenario).

0042 Proposition four asks, “Why don’t we refer to Genesis 1 as the seven days of creation?”

0043 An obvious reply is that the key terms, bara and asa, operate during the six days and detail a sequence of noumena.

0044 God rests on the seventh day.  The word, “rest”, means “a state of order”.  If our cosmos is a temple, then on the seventh day, God takes up residence in His house.

In six days, God’s house is built and on the seventh, God makes it His home.

0045 As I see it, Walton’s discussion brings Genesis 1 as close to natural philosophy as the text permits.

In terms of category-based nested forms, each day manifests as a normal context₃ and a potential₁.

0046 These can be combined into a category-based nested form.

0047 Day seven virtually situates the six pairs of esse_ce and essence.

The Creation Story’s hylomorphe for day seven is typical for the ancient Near East.

0048 Day seven is the day of rest.  Day seven is the day that God resides in the order that He establishes.

Walton notes that the day of rest is not a day of leisure.  Instead, the seventh day is when we put down our own work in order to attend to God’s sovereign work.  After all, the world that we call, “home”, turns out to be the house of God.

0049 What is proposition five?

In the Creation Story, God’s declarations of goodness provide perspective.

0050 If day seven virtually situates days one through six and if the heavenly chorus proclaims the news of God’s domain, then when God declares, “it is good”, in the Creation Story, there is someone to receive the message.

Now, of course, some members of the angelic choir realize, “it is not good”, for them.  From what I understand, this scenario defines the opening of John Milton’s masterwork, Paradise Lost.

0051 As far as the category-based nested form goes, God’s declaration caps the situation of day seven, as shown in the following interscope.  The three-level interscope is presented in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0052 Walton writes that God’s declarations of goodness, which occur after each day (with one exception), must be understood in terms of lexical and contextual inquiry.  This is the closest we can get to plain speaking.

Lexical inquiry explores the way that words are used.  “Good” describes God.  “Good” contrasts with “evil”.  A good thing works the way that it is supposed to.

Contextual inquiry investigates the range of situations in which a word appears.  What would the negation of “good” look like?  Well, Genesis 2:18 offers one example.  God says that it is not good that man should be alone.  Does that imply that there is something unworkable about Adam’s situation?

You bet.

0053 Walton tries to square the circle on day two, where there is no declaration of goodness.  One reason is obvious.  Both the waters above and the waters below are altered in subsequent days.  The waters above are adorned when lights in the firmament become visible… er… are installed, in day four.  The waters below separate into land and sea, in day three. 

0054 But, that is not the controversy.

Today, many project all sorts of meanings, presences and messages into the word, “good”.  These projections lead people to conclude that God’s creation is not good.  I mean, why create the light and darkness before putting lights in the firmament?  Why natural evil?  Why are we born in pain?  Why do we die in pain?

The thought-leaders of our current Lebenswelt spin fantasies around the word, “good”.  They project perfection into the creation before the Fall.  They project the absence of natural evil.  They project a message of a bliss where no-one feels pain.  They say, “If God’s creation does not satisfy the criteria that we project, then it is not ‘good’.”

0055 In response, consider this Jobian thought experiment.

I am in the city.  I conform to my thought-leader’s world views.  Creation is not good.  We must constantly struggle to bring the goodness that “we” desire to life.

After the cognitive bubble of all projections pops, my world falls into ruin.  I flee the city. I learn to live in the wild.  I join others in a band of like-minded survivors.  Life seems to be hard, but God provides.  We learn to run with nature.

Sometimes, I have nightmares of the world that I used to live in, a world far from nature, a world full of pomposities imposing preposterous projections upon the word, “good”.  I wake up and realize, “Right now, I live the way I evolved to be.  I have never been so happy.  Every night I see the stars.  I follow the planets.  I regard the moon.  In their silence, they sing in unison.  The heavens declare the goodness of the Lord.”

0056 What is proposition six?

In the early chapters of Genesis, the word, “adam”, is used in a variety of ways.

In some cases, “adam” refers to human beings as a specific kind (or “species”).

In other cases, “adam” refers to the male of our species.

In other cases, “adam” serves as a personal name.

0057 Eggheads sort these cases out, based on clues, such as the presence or absence of a definitive article or an attached proposition.

0058 Why focus on this one word?

In speech-alone talk, we project meaning, presence and message into purely symbolic spoken words.  For “adam”, the projection is spectral.  There is a spectrum of meanings.  The effect is spooky.  “Adam” is everyone.  “Adam” is a representative.  “Adam” is a person.

0059 What does this suggest?

Plain-speaking interpretations get scrambled when the story-teller speaks both esoterically and plainly.

0060 Meanwhile, scientific investigations of word-use breaks the term, “adam”, into six classes: generic, archetypal, representational, personal, anomalous and proposition-attached.

Can we model “adam” based on these classifications?

0061 How do we define the word, “adam”?

Well, I can follow the masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.  “Adam” is an actuality, a spoken word, that is supported by three potentials.

Here is a picture.

0062 One problem with plain-speaking interpretations of Genesis 1-11 becomes more clear when I suggest, as Walton does in proposition nine, that the full potentials of the words are revealed by Saint Paul, thousands of years after the stories of the Primeval History are first told.

The latency of potential of the word, “adam”, is remarkable.

0063 N.T. Wright brings up latency in his contribution in proposition nineteen.  The early chapters of Genesis are not mentioned in the Old Testament.  On top of that, when Adam is discussed in postbiblical Second Temple texts, the subject is a matter of debate and conjecture.

Why is this the case?

One guess can be found in Looking at Mark Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil”, appearing in January 2022, in the blog at www.raziemah.com.

0064 What is proposition seven?

Genesis 2.4 starts a sequel to Genesis 1.1-2.3.

The other option, of course, is that Genesis 2.4-4 describes the creation of humans in the image of God in Genesis 1.

This other option is not tenable if…

0065 …Genesis 1-11 runs like a movie.

The opening is cosmological, ending with the heavenly chorus_3c celebrating God resting in His Creation_2b on the seventh day_3b, despite backroom drama of the angels who reject the creative project that God initiates.

Then, the camera winds its way down to a little island at the northern edge of the Persian Gulf.  Eden starts as a mudflat.  Then, lush vegetation grows upon the river-deposited soil.  Then, God walks through his strange, spontaneously-formed garden and says, “This looks good.”

0066 Walton’s argument turns on the Hebrew word, “toledot”, meaning “account”.  Genesis 2.4 offers a second account…

… and modern scientists cry, “Foul.”

0067 There are no breaks in human evolution.  The biblical authors cannot have it both ways.  Neither geneticists nor natural historians observe changes corresponding to a bottleneck consisting in a pair of two founders.

In response, intimidated Christians try to place Adam and Eve deep into the evolutionary record.  Adam and Eve live sometime after the domestication of fire and sometime before the appearance of anatomically modern humans in the fossil record.

0068 But, look at the text.  The biblical authors can have it both ways.

Genesis starts with a magnificent overture, expressing the esse_ce and essence of the “house” that we call “home”, which is also God’s abode, which is also “good”, in a way that defies the projections of idealists and elitists into the spoken word, “good”.

Then, Genesis continues with a scene where God creates Adam and Eve like a supernatural craftsman.

0069 The Primeval History is a sequel to the Creation Story.

God creates humans twice.

Here is a plain-speaking contradiction, showing that Genesis 1-11 is not scientifically or historically credible.

0070 Ahem, unless there is a twist in human evolution.

Of course, there are no breaks in human evolution in terms of genetics or human anatomy.  But, in cultural terms, in 7800 years, humans have gone from being completely uncivilized and unwittingly happy to completely civilized and compulsively miserable.  Science cannot deny that.

0071 Yes, there is a twist in human evolution.

Plainly speaking, it is a cultural turn.

The transition is portrayed as a hypothesis in the e-book, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, available at smashwords and other e-work venues.

The twist is dramatically rendered in the fiction, An Archaeology of the Fall, which is accompanied by an instructors guide, for those inclined to conduct a seminar on this topic.

0072 What does this mean?

The stories of Genesis are like zircons found in sediments in Archaean cratons.  These zircons contain inclusions holding samples of the atmosphere of the early Earth.  Similarly, the stories of Genesis (along with all the other origin stories of the ancient Near East) contain clues to the earliest developments within our current Lebenswelt, which starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, around 7800 years ago.

Yes, our current Lebenswelt starts with the Ubaid.  Theoretically, the current year is 7822 Ubaid Zero Prime (or 7822 U0′).  The Ubaid starts around 0 U0′.  (That’s “uh-oh” prime.)

So, the stories of Adam and Eve offer clues, metaphorical zircons, revealing the composition of the atmosphere of the mundane earth (so to speak) as it differentiates from the celestial earth (oh, I meant to say, the house of God).

0073 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the mundane and celestial earths are not differentiated.  This is the world we would call home, if we could return to paradise.

Take a look at the virtual nested form in the realm of possibility for the interscope of the Creation Story.  The Garden of Eden offers a sample of these possibilities.

0074 In our current Lebenswelt, the mundane and celestial earths are differentiated, just like the waters above and below the dome.  We do not live in paradise.  Instead, we live in constant fear that the waters above the dome will come crashing down and the waters below the ground will rupture and drown us.  But, these waters are metaphors for the chaos outside of the world that we create out of our spoken words.  Our spoken words create the societal idols that hold back the waters above the dome.  Our spoken words create the organizational consensus that holds back the waters below the dome.

0075 No, Walton does not discuss these matters.  He writes in 7815 U0′, without awareness of the hypothesis of the first singularity.  

0076 Proposition eight?

God’s craftsman-like creation of Adam and Eve are not what they seem to be to the modern materialist.

Plainly speaking, Genesis makes archetypal, not material, claims.

0077 “Archetype” is a wonderful word.  It is a composite of arche- (original) and -type (imprint).

0078 If “original” and “imprint” are two real elements, then there must be a contiguity.

Here is the hylomorphe.

0079 Ah, proposition six starts to make more sense.  The scientific ambiguity of the Hebrew term, “adam”, resolves when Adam, the original, is contiguous with adam, the human species.  But, adam is not really “the human species (generally)”.  Adam is us (in particular).  We are human₂.

Now, God fashions Adam from the dust of the earth, producing the following hylomorphe.

0080 The esse_ce of Adam is dust.  The essence of Adam is the preceding hylomorphe, which I call, “Adam”.

0081 This complex hylomorphe is the actuality₂ in a category-based nested form.

What is the normal context₃?

The key Hebrew word is ysr, which I write as “yeser“.

What is the potential₁?

One lesson underpinning God’s yeser₃ is found in Genesis 3:19.  Adam is dust and to dust he will return.  But, the potential is also described by God breathing into Adam’s nostrils, bringing Adam to life.

0082 Consequently, the corresponding nested form contains a wide, bifurcated potential, including both mortality and receiving God’s breath, which sounds, to me, like body and soul.

0083 God makes the woman from adam’s side or rib.  Even is later called mother of all living.

Here is the hylomorphe.

0084 Needless to say, the woman is more complicated than the man.

0085 What does this imply?

Genesis 2.4-5 presents a view of woman that is far more mature, insight-filled and sophisticated than reductionist modern ideological treatments.

0086 Remember, modern feminism ignores human biology.  Modern feminism denies human nature.  Modern feminism rejects the inherent relationality of the woman as the nexus of the family.  Modern feminism relies on spoken words to “name” the realities that they promote.  They rely on sovereign power to implement these named realities.  This behavior is discussed in How To Define the Word “Religion”.

Perhaps, a category-based treatment of the family is a good place to start the inquiry that will replace every wave of modern feminism.  A Primer on the Family, as well as The First and The Second Primers on the Organization Tier offer starting points for further inquiry.  The family is one of the few organizations that belong to both the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and our current Lebenswelt. 

0087 Thus, I come full circle, back to Walton’s eighth proposition.

On one hand, the fashioning of Adam and Eve is noumenal, not phenomenal.  Science does not apply, directly.

On the other hand, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the setting for the Genesis 2.4-4.  The hypothesis of the first singularity is the only proposal, to date, explaining how our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  The first singularity starts with the Ubaid.  Science applies.

In this regard, Adam and Eve are historical figures.

Their stories give scientists an insiders view of the realization of unconstrained social complexity in southern Mesopotamia.

0088 What is proposition nine?

The formation of Adam and Eve at the start of the Primeval History as a lot in common with other origin stories of the ancient Near East.

In short, they all are archetypal.

0089 I have already noted that the archetype works as a hylomorphe.  “Arche-” means “original”. “-Type” means “imprint”.  The contiguity is both individual and all.

The wordplay in Genesis is instructive.  There are two real elements, a person (“Adam”) and all humans (“adam”).  But, once “Adam” is created, then “adam” is not simply all humans.  “Adam” is us, humans in our current Lebenswelt.

Here is a picture.

0090 “Us” means “all of us” means “all humans in our current Lebenswelt”.

Once Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden, there is no going back.

Similarly, once a culture adopts speech-alone talk, then they travel a one-way street to our current Lebenswelt.

This includes the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, the first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

0091 The stories of Adam and Eve begin with a second creation of humans.  This second creation is recent.  There is no indication (except in the prior Creation Story) of humans living prior to the second creation.  Perhaps, in the Garden of Eden, there are clues to a deep past.  But, the storyteller cannot see past the first singularity.  The storyteller cannot envision the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0092 Walton considers eleven literary works from the ancient Near East.  They appear on cuneiform tablets, as noted earlier.  These works come from Sumer, Akkad and Egypt.  Each tells the origin of humans.

They all have one feature in common.  They cannot see far back in time.  The creation of humans is a recent affair, performed by fully differentiated gods, often using tools in an organizational framework.  For example, some stories tell of humans springing like plants from the soil.

0093 Why do all the origin stories of the ancient Near East, including the Primeval History in Genesis, portray a recent creation of humans?

Such is the nature of the first singularity.

Once a hand-speech talking culture adopts speech-alone talk, or comes into contact with a culture practicing speech-alone talk, it tends to drop the hand-component of its hand-speech talk.  The semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk are radically different than hand-talk, so cultural memories held in hand-speech talk traditions are soon forgotten.  It only takes a few generations.

0094 The Ubaid loses its memory of the cultures that fused to create it.  Similarly, the Akkadians and the Egyptians, early adopters of speech-alone talk, cannot remember their once-timeless hand-speech talk traditions.  Those old traditions don’t make sense. They don’t translate into speech-alone talk.  So, features are dreamily re-configured in order to depict what must have happened.

Why does the name of the Egyptian wise man, “Adapa”, sound like the name of the first human in Genesis, “Adam”?  There are many weird coincidences between the eleven origin stories that Walton discusses and the stories in Genesis 1-11.  These coincidences point to fluid conditions, where storytellers attempt to codify events and processes that are (1) evolutionarily recent, (2) unpredictably novel and (3) utterly confounding.

Speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.  Labor and social specialization spontaneously manifest, for no apparent reason.  Innovations cannot be rationalized, so they must be gifts from the gods.  What human, in right mind, would invent the wheel or writing or irrigation or ziggurats?  They are all spontaneously created as speech-alone words produce artifacts and the produced artifacts validate the meanings of the spoken words.  How crazy is that?  Er… I should ask… how stable is that?

0095 In contrast, the hand-speech talking cultures of the North American Plains Indians and the Australian Aborigineshave memories in deep time.  The dance circles and the dreamtime are timeless hand-speech talk traditions.

But, like all previous hand-speech talking cultures who encounter civilization, these cultures are rapidly losing the hand-component of their hand-speech talk.  These cultures are adopting speech-alone talk.  They are now immersed in speech-alone talking civilizations, whose members imagine that, because they are wealthier (labor specialization) and more powerful (social specialization), they represent a superior way of life.

0096 What is proposition ten?

The New Testament addresses Adam and Eve as archetypes.

0097 Five passages in the New Testament explicitly mention Adam and Eve.

0098 In Luke 3, Adam is an individual, the founder of the line of Seth, that leads into the line of Noah, then the line of Abraham, then the line of David.

0099 In Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the Romans, Adam is both an individual and all of us.  The contiguity, however, is now entangled in fallenness.  Fallen Adam is the original.  Fallen us is the imprint.

0100 Even though this hylomorphe has the structure of an archetype, the qualifier of “fallen” specifies the archetype as a primordial image.  The individuality of Adam becomes far more important.  The all-ness of the fall becomes far more real.  This raises the question of the historical Adam.  This also raises the question of how the fall is transmitted from Adam to all of us. 

0101 What is proposition 11?

Adam and Eve are both archetypal and real people who lived in the past.

This proposition follows from both the archetype as hylomorphe and the fall as a condition.  If Adam is the original fallen one, and if we are the imprint of Adam’s fallenness, then we wonder, “How could this have happened?”

The contiguity, [individual, all], does not seem adequate.

So, how does the hylomorphe work?

0102 Paul does not completely escape this issue, since he raises the question of conditions between Adam and Moses in Romans 5.  He seems to answer that the hylomorphe works because Adam broke God’s explicit commandment and this infraction establishes that God has explicit commandments, whether we are aware of them or not.  Thinkers in the Second Temple Period wrestle with these questions, I suppose, because the Jewish establishment is heavily invested in elucidating and proclaiming commandments found in the Pentateuch and proposing (or offering) ways around them (if you get my drift).  If there are 600 commandments to be found, then certainly their (often illiterate) clients do not know them.

0103 Three hundred years later, Saint Augustine comes up with a far better way to explain the contiguity between fallen Adam and fallen us.  We are directly descended from Adam and Eve.  Unlike Paul’s solution, Augustine’s explanation turns out to be fully scientific, because it is fully debunked by the discipline of genetics seventeen centuries later.

Walton says that genetics debunking Augustine’s proposal is irrelevant, since Adam and Eve are archetypes.  However, as noted above, Adam may be archetypal without raising scientific questions, but when fallen Adam is archetypal, scientific questions cannot be avoided.

0104 Happily, another solution comes from (what I jokingly call) Augustine’s corrected proposal, which provides a parallel hylomorphe in the field of science.

0105 To me, Augustine’s corrected proposal is to be preferred to Walton’s waving the word, “archetype”, all over the place.

0106 In order to shore up his argument ,Walton presents an example of another biblical figure who is archetypal and a real person in history.

Paul discusses Mechizedek in Hebrew 5-7.  He mixes information about Melchizedek in Genesis 14, rhetoric about Melchizedek as a theological-political prototype of Jerusalem-based rulership, and speculative Jewish theology.  He presents Melchizedek as an archetype for Christ as priest and king. 

Here is a picture.

0107 Yes, Walton’s argument about Melchizedek and archetype works.

So, this where Walton takes his readers.

0108 What is proposition 12?

Adam is created to be a priest in a sacred space.  Eve is created to be Adam’s helper.

0109 Yes, Walton capitalizes on his success in applying the archetype to Melchizedek.

However, Walton is not aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0110 Here is a comparison of two hylomorphes, one biblical and one scientific.

0111 This comparison turns Walton’s thesis on its head.  The world of Adam and Eve is not lost.  The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is.

Adam and Eve are memorialized as a fairy tale, placed in Scripture because it has been part of the Jewish tradition for as long as anyone can remember.  Even longer!

0112 The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the site where speech-alone talk unconstrains social complexity.  Two hand-speech talking Neolithic cultures coalesce, driven together by the rising waters of the Persian Gulf.  The result is a speech-alone talk creole, with radically different semiotic properties than hand-speech talk.  It is no accident that the Sumerian language is unrelated to any family of languages.

We know that purely symbolic speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.  Plus, we know that complexity may build or self-destruct.  There is no way for us to know what really happened.  We only are certain that, today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

0113 Walton’s treatment of the stories of Adam and Eve suddenly have relevance, in a way hitherto unimagined.

0114 Now, I get technical.

Speech-alone talk consists of two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole (speech act) and langue (associated mental act).  We think that we can define a spoken word.  We cannot.  We can only project meaning, presence and message into that word.  So, we project langue into parole.  When we hear someone utter that parole, our projections are confirmed.

01151 What does this imply?

Each spoken word is a placeholder in a system of differences.

Spoken words can be regarded in terms of diagrammatic systems of differences, such as the Greimas square, pictured here.

0116 Walton says that Adam and Eve are “priests” in a sacred space.

So, the focal word, A, is “priest”.

The contrast word, B, is “king”.

The opposition to B and complement to A, C, must have something do to with running the garden.  Yes, a priest or king could name the animals and fall in love with Eve, but what about that commandment?  A priest follows God’s commandments.  A king is sovereign.  A king makes the rules.

So C, the contradiction to B and complement to A, is “someone who follows the rules”.

And D, the contrast to C, the opposition to A and the complement of B, is “someone who makes the rules”.

Here is a picture.

0117 Besides showing that the Greimas square is a powerful tool, the challenge posed by God’s commandment not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil becomes more palpable.  Adam can be priest, but not king.

Now, Walton does not know this.  Walton does not know that the hypothesis of the first singularity changes the waters below his discussion.

0118 This brings me back to Melchizedek.

In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, hand-speech talk can not fully differentiate the roles of priest and king.

However, hand-speech can easily denote someone who is both priest and king.  For example, in tribal gatherings, carrying the laurel branch may designate what we would call, both “priest” and “king”.  One can picture and point to the laurel branch and the one carrying the laurel branch.

In hand-speech talk, the referent defines the gestural word (parole) and the result (langue) is an intuitive awareness of the referent’s matter and form.  For the one carrying the laurel branch, what we call “priest” corresponds to esse_ce and what we call “king” corresponds to essence.

0119 In Genesis 14, Abram pays tribute to someone who transcends the differentiation of the roles of priest and king.

Here is a picture.