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Author Topic:   How Literal is Genesis
truthlover
Member (Idle past 4059 days)
Posts: 1548
From: Selmer, TN
Joined: 02-12-2003


Message 31 of 47 (398561)
05-01-2007 12:31 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Pete OS
04-30-2007 6:26 PM


Ignorance is indeed bliss, Pete, but it's hard to remain ignorant in this information age. If I don't acknowledge the problems with historicity of certain stories, then it will get shoved in my face by those who don't like God, anyway. It seems better to me that you hear it from people like me rather than people like Ken Ham, who will tell you your whole faith is on the line if you doubt any of it, or from someone who is attacking the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
My experience is that if you don't have a working and powerful faith, that allows you to see the hand of God on a day by day basis (which is what the Bible promises, anyway; Acts says they were awed daily), it would be awful hard to remain a believer in this present age without being a close-minded, ears-stopped type.
How did Christ act while he was on the earth? Yes, he took the historical parts of Scripture pretty literally, but what about what he preached? He was very straightforward about his willingness to change what was said ("You have heard it said...but I say..."). He was willing to say, "Hey, none of that food stuff matters at all, because nothing going in your mouth can defile you. It's what comes out that defiles you."
Then, what did he say? Did he say, "You should believe because I can prove myself from the Scriptures"? No, he said, "I have three witnesses: my works, my Father, who is doing the works, and John the Baptist." Jesus' message was confirmed by the fruit it bore, not by the interpretations of Scripture that he gave.
Even so, if you want faith today, look for a message that bears fruit; that saves; that transforms lives and puts people in contact with God in a noticeable way. The faith Christ preached is known by the love it produces in his disciples and by their unity (Jn 14 & 17).
My faith rests on a reality that is true today. My trust that there was an Abraham with experiences with God comes from our own similar experiences with God today, as well as from the stories handed down that wound up in our Bible.
The problem with American Christianity today is that it is almost all words. The kingdom of God does not consist of words. That's what the Bible says.
I'd like to invite you again to look at Error 404 (Not Found)!!1. When the message of Christ is taken seriously, put into practice, and lived out in abandonment to God, it produces fruit that makes faith pretty unshakeable, because that faith is seen every day.
I can't defend the faith of Christ intellectually. I believe God meant it that way. It was meant to be defended by the power of God.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 32 of 47 (398565)
05-01-2007 12:48 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Pete OS
04-30-2007 8:08 PM


Re: trying to open a gate
Pete OS writes:
I don't consider the moral of the Pied Piper to be revelation from God
I can see why you would not. But what makes you conclude that the bible is inspired by your god?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Pete OS, posted 04-30-2007 8:08 PM Pete OS has replied

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Pete OS
Junior Member (Idle past 6100 days)
Posts: 31
Joined: 04-26-2007


Message 33 of 47 (398589)
05-01-2007 3:37 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by Dr Adequate
05-01-2007 1:00 AM


Dr. Adeqaute writes:
But these sentences don't relate to one another.
I agree that those sentences don't go together. That was a very poorly worded paragraph. I was doing a quick summary the first couple of sentences and then made a sudden transition in thought without any warning.
To try to elaborate, many here claim that God can inspire the Bible with a message using events and/or stories that did not really happen. In some respects, I was coming into this thread with that expectation as it seemed Adam and Eve and perhaps even Noah were going to have to be stories without a history as defined by 21st century western thinking. What I was not expecting was for the bulk of the OT history to be shed in a similar light (albeit not by everyone here, there is some disagreement). At this point I do get a little Ken-Hamish and wonder whether we would have any precident to trust the historicity of Jesus if we don't trust the historicity of the first 9/10 tenths of the Bible. And while you can convince me that Adam and Eve was a story with a very important message about God as creator, I am sticking that the events of Jesus's life, most notably his death and ressurection, are not simply a story but an actual event that matters in 21st century spacetime. (jar my disagree, though I don't think this is the thread to hash this out) Now I see what you are saying that not acceping Adam and Eve as literal stories does not nessisarily discredit the NT as Ken Ham might claim. But I was expecting a discussion about how Adam and Eve are a fable, and maybe even Noah, with some contextual clues from the OT itself, with full assurance that Abraham really went to Cannann and really believed God and had it credited to him as righteousness.
I am not ultimatly disagreeing with anyone here. I definitly need to think about it more. I am just being transparant and relaying the fact that it has made me more unsettled then when I started.
Edited by Pete OS, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Pete OS
Junior Member (Idle past 6100 days)
Posts: 31
Joined: 04-26-2007


Message 34 of 47 (398590)
05-01-2007 3:47 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by truthlover
05-01-2007 12:31 PM


truthlover writes:
Ignorance is indeed bliss, Pete, but it's hard to remain ignorant in this information age.
That was just a joke. However, it is true I don't have a whole lot of time (like most people) and probably will not study archeology to the level that I would understand its genuine objections to OT history.
I agree with what you say in your post. I tell others often that changed lives is the only meaningful examination of my faith. I admit complete circular reasoning in my faith in the Bible. If God is real and activily working in people's lives, it should not be indistiguishable from the lives of those without God. I don't recall you inviting me to visit your website. Coicidently I did skim over it on my own when I first found this board; I will take a closer look as time permits.

This message is a reply to:
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Pete OS
Junior Member (Idle past 6100 days)
Posts: 31
Joined: 04-26-2007


Message 35 of 47 (398591)
05-01-2007 3:51 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Larni
05-01-2007 12:48 PM


Re: trying to open a gate
Lami writes:
I can see why you would not. But what makes you conclude that the bible is inspired by your god?
A valid question. One I'm sure it hashed out a thousand times on seperate boards and one of which I'm sure I would do little to convince you of. But either way, I don't think it is appriopiate for this thread. I would like to keep this a discussion among Christian believers as I requested in the OP. Thanks.

This message is a reply to:
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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 36 of 47 (398617)
05-01-2007 7:07 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by Pete OS
05-01-2007 3:37 PM


Pete OS writes:
But I was expecting a discussion about how Adam and Eve are a fable....
We know that Adam and Eve are a fable because the human race didn't start from a population of two. Biology just doesn't work that way.
... and maybe even Noah....
We know that Noah is a fable because the flood story is physically impossible in numerous ways - and because there is not one single shred of evidence that such an event ever took place.
... with full assurance that Abraham really went to Cannann and really believed God and had it credited to him as righteousness.
So, if the Bible starts out with fables - i.e. more than just history - why wouldn't it continue in the same vein? Why would it lower its standards from larger-than-life to mundane?
You seem to recognize that you're in retreat from a strictly literalist position. But your biggest concern seems to be fear of how far you'll have to retreat - not what is important or what is true.

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Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC

This message is a reply to:
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AdminNosy
Administrator
Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 37 of 47 (398619)
05-01-2007 7:22 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by ringo
05-01-2007 7:07 PM


Ringo -- should you be here?
PeteOS asked in the OP:
quote:
I would also like only Christian believers to respond; loosely defined here as believing in Jesus: His deity, incarnation, death, resurrection, and into Him for salvation.
  —PeteOS
I'd like you to respect that request.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 38 of 47 (398625)
05-01-2007 7:44 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by AdminNosy
05-01-2007 7:22 PM


Re: Ringo -- should you be here?
Should I be here?
I haven't questioned beliefs about Jesus at all in this thread - the topic is Genesis, after all.
It isn't a Christian's prerogative to judge whether or not I'm a "true believer". It probably shouldn't be an admin's either.

Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation.
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC

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Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 39 of 47 (412025)
07-23-2007 3:44 PM


Archetype
Adam and eve are our archetypal first humans touched by God. The first Shaman or prophet for God.
This was happening on all continents. Notice that often God is not given a name.
God is universal. He speaks to some few only.
The Bible is a teaching tool. It tries to tell us all that the ancients knew of God. They gathered other myths and legends and tried to give the knowledge of the then known world.
Within its pages we find the tree of good and evil. It give us not only Christ but the Antichrist. It asks us to dither out who is speaking and when. Christ or the Antichrist.
One example of the Antichrist is
Exodus 31-15
Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
Certainly not what Christ would say and obviously not a practice any sane God would do.
Eve of course made the right choice in escaping the garden of ignorance. Without Her we would have no history. Knowledge of good and evil are a necessary ingredient for mans good health and this way, man is intelligent enough to know why he follows God.
No robots for God.
The absolute worst way to read the Bible is literally.
There are no talking snakes in reality.
Regards
DL

  
pbee
Member (Idle past 6028 days)
Posts: 339
Joined: 06-20-2007


Message 40 of 47 (413238)
07-30-2007 12:22 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Pete OS
04-27-2007 9:23 PM


I find your topic very good, however, there is no way to cover, even half of your questions properly within the scope of this thread. So with that in mind, I will limit my response to the beginning.
First off, if you are seeking to scrutinize the creation account with a bible such as the KJV you are going to fall flat on your face. Not because the bible is bad(per say) but rather because of the nature of transcriptions and literary translations. The KJV suffers from some would call timeframe translation issues. In the older Greek and Hebraic texts the implications and weight of the creation account is vastly different from the English translations we have today. Why? because biblical translators had to interpret the meaning of the scriptures in order to communicate the context given from the older writings. This meant that we are in many ways, limited to the translators ability to understanding the meaning of the texts.
The issue for me was that the Creation account simply didn't jive with things. It doesn't take a scientist or a scholar to see that the KJV creation account requires a little contortion in order to pan out with the evidence at hand. However, I was very pleased to hear that the older writings seemed in very good standing with the current state of science on our surroundings.
Since God would transcend time and space, I is not at all surprising to conclude that the earth is old. The universe most likely older since it would seem as though everything is expanding from a single point. I believe that when God said, he created man from earth, that this implied that we came to be what we are today as a result of his will. This would include that out of all the living creatures of the earth, that we are the absolute physical beings above all the living things.
I often ponder whether or not A&E were indeed as we are today. I would think not. How different they would of been from us remains a mystery, however if I had to guess, I would say they were probably completely incompatible with us now. When I think back at the command that God gave Adam and Eve, I can never come to terms with how powerful they would have become here on earth. He essentially told them, do anything you want(make your own world) just don't betray me. He then told them, fill the earth and master it. That command alone, says it all. God was in no way limiting the capacity that mankind would hold as humans. Adam and Eve would have become the parents and recognized authority of all the inhabited earth. They would have been great and likely example of Gods greatness.
There is no mention of other beings other than angels and God while Adam and Eve were in the garden. It is unknown to this day whether they had any offspring prior to there disobedience act. However, had they of had offspring, those children would not of been condemned unless they too would of eaten of the fruit which I believe the account would of mentioned.
I have always considered the Cain and Able account to be literal. As for the soul, The scriptures refer to living creatures as souls which would indicate that Adam respectively had a soul since he was declared alive. I have always concluded that all living people are likewise living souls.
Of all the information recorded in the bible, I never doubted the fall of man. The entire account is far to implicative to discount as anything but literal under the terms.
PS. I have no particular stake against the KJV bibles. I used it as an example since it is a very common and seemingly most used bible when it comes to reading and reference.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 41 of 47 (413466)
07-30-2007 11:02 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by pbee
07-30-2007 12:22 AM


First off, if you are seeking to scrutinize the creation account with a bible such as the KJV you are going to fall flat on your face. Not because the bible is bad(per say) but rather because of the nature of transcriptions and literary translations. The KJV suffers from some would call timeframe translation issues.
some people find the language more difficult, yes. one gets a better picture reading, say, the nJPS. the conversational tone of the hebrew is (ironically) better translated -- the KJV reads like brick-laying becuase it is so scrutinizingly literal.
In the older Greek and Hebraic texts the implications and weight of the creation account is vastly different from the English translations we have today. Why? because biblical translators had to interpret the meaning of the scriptures in order to communicate the context given from the older writings. This meant that we are in many ways, limited to the translators ability to understanding the meaning of the texts.
actually, this is not especially true for the KJV. the KJV sought to translate in the most literal manner possible. nearly all idiomatic expressions are preserved, and very little interpretative "guesswork" has been applied. the only MAJOR quibble is that KJV translators took the qere readings over the kethiv ones -- basically, the emendations and marginal notes where ancient scribes thought "this doesn't make sense, maybe it should say this."
but much, much more interpretation is used in a translation like the nJPS (good, informed opinion here) or the NLT (not so good).
but what i mean to say is that if you are attempting apologetics between the bible and reality, and using "don't look at the KJV" as your argument, it's not a very good one. don't make a case for the implications of the hebrew or greek, unless you can read hebrew and greek, or aware of what they actually are. because the implications of the hebrew more or less demolish any "day-age" or "gap" hypothesis, and any hope of reconciliation with the reality of an old earth.


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Jon
Inactive Member


Message 42 of 47 (413473)
07-31-2007 1:38 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Pete OS
04-27-2007 9:23 PM


My 2
...loosely defined here as believing in Jesus: His deity, incarnation, death, resurrection, and into Him for salvation.
If this is your definition of a Christian, then it seems you have left out the connection between Christianity and the Bible, which makes me wonder why it is that you are only permitting Christian respondents. In that spirit, I think I'll just chime in quick.
Is the entire story just made up?
Essentially, yes.
...do we have evidence that it is impossible that the whole human race hit an 8 person bottle neck just 5k years ago or so
Indeed.
I know Dr. Meyers at Institute of Bible and Science suggests that the Hebrew is a translation of a mistranslation of another language where one little jot or tittle changes the number by a factor of ten, and if you decrease by a factor of ten you have very realistic ages for childbearing and death. I am not yet comfortable with this explanation though.
As well you shouldn't be... it's down-right silly.
quote:
Gen 5:20 -- And all the days of Ja'-red were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.
Reduce that by a factor of ten and we get 96.2. A rather odd way to measure a lifespan. Besides, I do not believe that people in that area in those times wrote numbers using positional notation and 'tens.'
I have absolutely no philosophical hang-ups to the reality of evolution.
Well, you really shouldn't anyway, since evolution is completely a scientific theory, and shouldn't be polluted with philosophical ...
I have problems not believing Adam was a real person given his role in Romans 5.
Simply because you are mentally and emotional incapable of wrapping your head around the fact that there never was an Adam, does not mean there ever really was one.
Jon

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium

This message is a reply to:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 43 of 47 (413735)
08-01-2007 3:32 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by Jon
07-31-2007 1:38 AM


hundreds of years
Gen 5:20 -- And all the days of Ja'-red were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.
Reduce that by a factor of ten and we get 96.2. A rather odd way to measure a lifespan. Besides, I do not believe that people in that area in those times wrote numbers using positional notation and 'tens.'
actually, numbers in hebrew can be a little weird. let's look:
quote:
,
shtayim v'sheshim shanah, v'tesha maot shanah
two and-sixty year, and-nine hundred year.
962 years
they do break it into tens places, weirdly. but even MORE weirdly, all the 100's places seem to have an extra division.
somebody please feel free find some sort of meaning in this. i don't know what to make of it -- it's not standard practice, as far as i'm aware.
Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.


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pbee
Member (Idle past 6028 days)
Posts: 339
Joined: 06-20-2007


Message 44 of 47 (413753)
08-01-2007 8:33 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Pete OS
04-27-2007 9:23 PM


quote:
I know Dr. Meyers at Institute of Bible and Science suggests that the Hebrew is a translation of a mistranslation of another language where one little jot or tittle changes the number by a factor of ten, and if you decrease by a factor of ten you have very realistic ages for childbearing and death. I am not yet comfortable with this explanation though.
Let us consider an individual called Mahalalel. The Bible records mention that Mahalalel lived on for sixty-five years. Then he became father to Jared and so on and so forth. ” "All the days of Mahalalel amounted to eight hundred and ninety-five years and he died.” If we used Dr. Meyers approach Mahalalel would have fathered his son at an impossible age! Based on the information given, It would seem as though people of that time lived closer to the perfect vitality of the first human pair.
Edited by pbee, : Paragraph error

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 45 of 47 (413757)
08-01-2007 9:10 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by pbee
08-01-2007 8:33 AM


The other possibility is that one age is "wrong" - i.e. the text is corrupt at that point, perhaps missing out a hundreds figure (one or two hundred). That's far more likely than the idea that the ages are literally true.
(Personally I suspect a factor of about 12 is more accurate - and the ages were originally given in months rather than years).

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