What is to be taken literally?

uh, that's not what ned said, at all. he never said anything about science saying the slightest thing about god. just that the literaly reading of genesis doesn't fit reality.hell, the literal reading of genesis doesn't fit itself. chapters 1 and 2 don't line up. which account are you reading literally?

as sort of a side note, i've always read things a little metaphorically. but going back and re-reading genesis, it does appear that the people who wrote certain parts of did think that god was a physical entity, and that he was more or less indistinguishable from man (save for some unknown feature that made it obvious that he was god).for reference i cite:

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Gen 32:24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

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Gen 32:30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

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Gen 18:1 And the LORD appeared unto him [abraham] in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;
Gen 18:2 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw [them], he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground,

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this passage puzzled me when i read it. it says that yhwh appeared to abraham while he was sitting on his porch. but what abraham saw was three men.the way god is portrayed in genesis is also very human-like in emotions and attitude. by exodus, he's become more obscure and appears physically only once, to moses. by this time, seeing god's face is considered deadly. people are advised not to come too close to mt horeb, lest they die. as the bible goes on, god becomes less and less physical and more and more abstract.i don't think this has anything to do with the evolution of god neccessarily, but the way man thinks of him. and the people who wrote genesis certainly thought of him as a physical being.

angel? nah...she seems to be the questioning kind. we like those.they go good with ranch dressing.i mean. um.

if god made everything perfect, and god made man, god made man perfect. simple logic here. either he made everything perfect, or he made us. take this one to the flood/geology forum. you'll find that it's just not true. there is simply no evidence for a worldwide flood. we do have evidence for other world-wide cataclysms though, such as an asteroid impact circa 65 mya.you're also missing a fundamental understanding of genesis. it says that everything was water before god came along, and god created the heavens as a kind of inverse snow dome for us to live in. filling it with water is like literally erasing creation. not if you believe genesis literally. he doesn't get two chapters in before realizing he's messed up. he also has to fix various messes he made prominently in chapters 3, 6, and 11. no, that's not at all what genesis said. genesis strongly implies that man was ALWAYS mortal. look at what god says for the reason he kicks them out:

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And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever

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man wasn;t living forever before this point. on top of that, god LIES.

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But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

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they didn't die. in fact

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Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

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hasatan is an angel of the lord. look at the texts of samuel vs chronicles

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1Ch 21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

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2Sa 24:1 And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

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either one is wrong, or hasatan works for god. he's also listed among the sons of god that show up in the first bit of job.again, i'm just reading the bible here -- who's distorting things and misleading believers?This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-11-2004 04:57 PM

oh no, i didn't mean to say that it was the ONLY conclusion to be drawn. there is no part of teh bible (or any document) that can only be read one way. i was just suggesting that upon re-reading genesis i got the impression that the authors did think of god a physical being. i can't really say "this proves it" as it's more of an impression from reading the whole book. no, it certainly doesn't. the passage is set up in a very literal way, and describes a fight. but there is a metaphorical way of reading it. and it does have another purpose as well -- it tells the origin of a certain custom that was already in practice at the time of writting. (a "just so" story. i forget the technical term)like i think i said before, the jews have a system that says there are four ways to read each passage: simple/literal, applying to modern life, symbolic, and mystic. well, the best date for the authorship of genesis i can come up with is circa 600 bc (when camels were domesticated, ur belonged to chaldeans, and they were babylonian captivity). i don't think people then were exactly stupid. in fact, i think they probably had a more educated way of understanding the text than we do today.i just think that intended for god to be a physical figure in the book, at least when read in the simplistic literal way.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-12-2004 01:09 AM

eh, no.

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Gen 32:30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

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something has changed about god, or the way the hebrews think of god, between this verse and the one you reference. i'm not positive if exodus was written after genesis, but reading in the order the bible is set in, the intent of the authors appears to be that god is becoming more and more abstract and less and less physical. in exodus, even coming near the mountain god is on with moses becomes deadly, yet joseph wrestled with him in the desert.

kind of screams symbolism and political motivation, don't it?

hey, don't look at me. i don't think god had anything to do with the writing of the bible.

i actually think that MOST of the time god is portrayed speaking to moses, he's NOT in a physical form. he's portrayed as having a physical location (the mountain, the top of the ark, the pillar of fire/smoke, the burning bush) but not a body. it's only when moses asks that god shows his physical form.granted, there are other ways of reading it. but to say that the ONLY way to read it is that god has a literal body is absurd. i think the text does indicate that he does, but it can also be read metaphorically as well and literally.the passage about seeing god's back but not his face is actually very important symbolically. what it's saying is that you can't just see god directly, you have to look at indirect evidence. it's message about the backwards nature faith. i think god is both male and female. what does that imply? seriously, i don't know if god really has or had a physical body. i don't really know for certain that god exists. and i'm not sure what i believe about his genitalia.

here's a bit of a psalm we read in class the other day

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The sea saw [it], and fled: Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams, [and] the little hills like lambs.
What [ailed] thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, [that] thou wast driven back?
Ye mountains, [that] ye skipped like rams; [and] ye little hills, like lambs?

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tell me, do mountains look like rams? does the sea have legs on which to flee?now, this is a bit of an extreme example, yes. but this is blatant personification. and i agree with you that authors of some of the books of the bible (genesis and exodus in particular) probably thought that god had a physical body. but is that the ONLY way to read it? no. there are symbolic and metaphoric ways to read it as well. i explained one of them above, one of the ones you used as a primary example, to pink sasquatch.the ones i used as examples have other readings too.

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Exd 3:2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush [was] not consumed.

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this was a strawman on the part of pink sasquatch, but i was waiting for you call it. it is not the yhwh who appears as fire in a bush to moses -- it is yhwh's messenger. your point is somewhat correct in that it is not god appearing, only speaking, and only after moses is scared by the angel.god's angels are routinely portrayed as fiery, btw. seraph, as in seraphim, means fiery.

i try to take things in as many ways as i possibly can.even if it's intended to be read as a literal story, it can still be an allegory to something else. however, i do think the authors intended for god to be read as a physical presence.but i don't think that neccessarily means that he does have a body, or did have a body, or even that the authors actually thought he had body.so i do agree with you in some respect. it does strike me reading genesis that god is a physical being. but this impression varies from book to book.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-12-2004 11:35 PM