Genesis: is it to be taken literally?

And just how do you do that literally? Actually, there is no more evidence that Jesus took them literally than that he took the story of the good master or the one about the houses built on different foundations literally.Jesus taught by story and parable. There is no reason to think that he took Genesis as any more real than the subjects of any other illustrative tale.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Dear Proboscis,About Literal v Figurative, I believe if you read the Bible with no preconceptions, and a little grammatical understanding, you can easily decipher what to take literally and what to take figuratively.Here are a few guidelines you might want to use when examining scripture.Guidelines for Interpreting Scripture:1) Establish the correct frame of reference.
2) Make no conclusions without examining and considering the whole Word of God. {I.E. The Bible}
3) Accept only those conclusions that are consistent with the whole Word of God.
4) Interpret narrative passages in light of the didactic, or instructive, passages and illustrations in light of principles.
5) Take any passage literally unless its context clearly indicates that it should be taken figuratively or symbolically.
6) Accept a symbol definition only if it is defined as such elsewhere in Scripture
7) Recognize that many prophecies are fulfilled more than once.
8) Be prepared to draw more than one message or application from a passage.
9) Be alert to occasional problems in translation from the original languages.
[Taken from copies of transparencies used in a lecture about Biblical Paradoxes by Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe. Home - Reasons to Believe]For instance, In Matthew 5: 13 — 16 Jesus is speaking to a crowd of Jews, He says’13You are like salt for all mankind. But if salt loses its taste, there is no way to make it salty again. It has become worthless; so it is thrown away and people walk on it.14You are like light for the whole world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15Noboby lights a lamp to put it under a bowl; instead he pts it on the lamp-stand, where it gives light for everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and give praise to your Father in Heaven.
(Good News Version)Now, go threw the steps and see if He (Jesus) was speaking figuratively or literally. And remember just because a passage is literal does not mean that you cannot, take into account different contextual clues. It also does not mean you can only use one definition of a given word.Take for instance the Creation account it Genesis. Seven days are mentioned.The definition for Day includes:1 a) the period of light between sunrise and sunset 2 a) the 24-hour period (mean solar day) that it takes the earth to rotate once on its axis with respect to the sun: the civil or legal day is from midnight to midnight 4 [also pl.] a period or time; era; age [the best writer of her day, in the days of old] {Webster’s New World College Dictionary, third Edition, 1997}Now, as Americans in our hustle and bustle world, we would tend to jump to the conclusion that when this passage speaks of Day it means twenty-four hours, right? I, myself, took this stance for many years; until someone challenged my belief, and I took a closer look at the text.I then noticed two things. First, verse two {of Genesis chapter one} states that God was, as the Amplified Bible puts it, moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters. So the point of view was the face of the Earth {which at that time was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep.}.Second, I noticed that there is no Morning and Evening for the seventh day; and no indications from the text {other than that} that the seventh day should be any different from the first. After I understood that day could encompass eras and ages I understood that there was really no reason to take the text as 24-hour days. It is still a literal interpretation since the word Day can be used to mean an era, or age.So, taking those two things into account I was able to understand I could take out the word day from the text and put in its place, for instance, era. Thus verse five could be, just as correctly, interpreted, literally, as, And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one era. {AB modified}O’ and for those who say OK, but how about the Evening and Morning? according to the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, third Edition, 1997 each can be described respectively: Evening: 3the last period, as of life, a career, ect., Morning: 2the first or early part [the morning of life]Please do not get me wrong, there are thing about the Bible that I do not understand, and things that cannot be tested with the tools we have at our disposal today. On the other hand there are many testable this written in the pages of the Bible. If you test those, and find no error, then it goes a long way to helping you accept the un-testable things, Doesn’t it?

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John3: 16, 17

quote:

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You have two places you can look. You have the Bible that is certainly the product of men, or the Universe that certainly is NOT the product of men.

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Jar!!Have a heart! It's so much easier to read the Bible, especially now that it's available in translations.But a serious point I want to make. The example of Buddha and Ramana Maharshi offers a third alternative and that is to look deeply into the source of our own being and awareness. Their point that I'm taking is that the crux of the mystery is in our aware existence, the "I amness" that we usually just assume in all this religion and science. Who is it that is aware of this?Do we know ourselves? The ego self image is heavily conditioned by words, thoughts but that "ego self" is an object to our awareness. Who is the subject?lfen

The Jewish tradition has it as allegory. There are very few (if any )
Jewish people that take Genesis as literal 6 day creation. The biblical
hebrew in which it was written makes that quite plan (for example, term term adem is a generic term for 'mankind', and is related to the word 'red dust', and is also related to the word 'blood'.)

But even in Buddhism, there is the Pangu myth. In many ways, it is similar to the Genesis stories except that it is characterised as an awakening instead of creation.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Question.What evidence do you have that the bible is an extremely acccurate chronology?

Jar,There developed a popular religon of Buddhism for the majority of the lay people. Buddhism is one of the least violent religions because of what I term its top down development. This I contrast with what I see as middle eastern religions bottom up development whereby first came the myths and only much later to my knowledge did more sophisticated contemplative viewpoints develop such as that of Meister Eckert.Thus a buddhist teacher will often be the one to suggest that all the myths, the gods, etc are products of the mind and empowered by the mind and with maturity are to be seen through. This is a teaching of some christian contemplatives, I believe it would fit Meister Eckert but I'm not well read in him. However as we see on the list there is a strong pull among some to return to the literal interpretations of biblical myths as they were the founding documents of the religion.The Buddha specifical denied the two required beliefs of Hinduism: that the Vedas were inerrant divine inspiration and the caste system.There are a plethora of elaborate birth myths and miracles in popular Buddhist religion but most buddhist teachers/teachings I have read regard them as teaching stories, myths that are not taken as literally true, partially because of the semantic sophistication that recognized that ultimate truth can only be falsified by language.lfen

There is a problem with that understanding.In biblical Hebrew, you also have to look at the verb that follows a plural noun. If the verb is plural, then, indeed the noun is pluralIf the verb is singular, then the noun is singular, but the importance of the noun is magified. For example, Moses was refered to as a plural noun, but a singular verb afterwards. This does not mean that there was more than one Moses, but in that passage, the importance of Moses was magnfied.

It all depends. Are you talking about the priests, or the common man.It took centuries for the priests to eliminate the worship of Ashera as
Yawheh's consort. She was worshiped amoung the commoners until about the 3rd century bc. I think.

I take it to be a story of our God. Not by our God. Written by man, for understanding of God. As is with the majority of the Old Testament. For me to say that I believe that it happened word for word, would be an outright lie, and anyone else who could possibly say the same thing, would have to come to that same conclusion. Why? Simple, though there is enough accuracy to prove that it did happen, there is enough distinct differences to prove that it didn't happen just as written. If anyone can prove me wrong, I would love to hear it. First tell me how it can happen just as said, when in fact there are two different accounts of several different stories. I will even accept a logical answer from the most popular story, creation.

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Angel

I have not been here for a LONG time and I see my topic actually got some response! Well I don't have nearly enough time to read EVERY post since the very first one, as after this, (which is part of my science) I have to go do my math. Anyway for those who don't take Genesis literally, (and are Christians), I have to through a few other questions out there: If you don't take the first and most historical book of the Bible literally, how can you take anything from the Bible literally? Genesis is a history of the beginning of the Earth and mankind, our fall, then the beginning of God's chosen people. Basically what you are saying, if you don't take the Creation account in Genesis literally, is that you can "pick and choose" which parts to believe, and that would create quite a bit of chaos, since everyone may have a different opinion.My next question is, how can something be figurative the first time it is ever used? For example, the Bible says Jesus is a "door." I think we ALL agree that this doesn't mean that Jesus was LITERALLY and PHYSICALLY a door, but if the word "door" had never been used before by anyone, how could we understand what it meant? How could the creation account be "figurative" the first time it is EVER mentioned? That just doesn't make sense.Ok well it's good to be back! I don't remember everything I studied in Biology, (since now I'm in Chemistry ) but I hope I can remember enough to debate or Jesus a little I have some other questions, but I dare not post them all in one message!

In reading this thread I wonder if part of the problem lies in a false dichotomy between true/false, fiction/non-fiction, history/mythology. I wonder, as has been brought up before, if the Hebrew people would consider the history/mythology of Genesis to be a valid question. I will try to explain by comparison to Lakota tradition. Please forgive the rambling! I hope this is on-topic, I think so.In traditional Lakota (Tetonisa) story-telling there was fiction (wakankanpi), non-fiction (woyakapi), and a third category called ohunkapa. The latter correspond most to the word parable. These are stories of heros and gods that are meant to shed light on the nature of the Wikan (~Great Spirit). Unlike Western mythology these stories were often invented by the story teller. If Christians followed this tradition they would go to church and hear the pastor telling a story of how Jesus was pulled over for speeding or some such thing with the message being to illustrate some truth about his nature.The deities in the ohunkapa tradition are considered "real" in that they represent true aspects of the world but their existence as individuals is a topic for discussion with the outcome irrelevant to the "truth " of the story. I hope that made sense! So you could ask a shaman "Did Gnaski really try to kill the gods?" and he could give you his opinion on whether or not it is historical. BUT the story itself is true because it frames the relationship between man and his control over the natural world. The story also is about if wisdom is subjective.So say I were to climb into my time machine (I am building it in the garage out of an old vacuum cleaner, I found the plans in a copy of Popular Mechanics I took from the dentist's office) and go back, say 2,500 years ago and find myself a Hebrew priest. If I asked him is Genesis literal or figurative would the answer be yes/no? Or is the question laden with a dichotomy that wouldn't mean a whole lot to the priest? In a history of the Bible class I took as an undergrad we discussed whether or not King David was real or mythological. The professor made the statement that it didn't matter to him either way because the story is about God's covenant with believers (then and now). That is ohunkapa!

Why does it have to be literal to be true? Don't they already, though? Isn't it obvious that everybody, even the Biblical literalists, comes to their own conclusions about what the Bible means? At the very least every different Christian sect seems to have come to different opinions about the Bible, even those that claim to be fundamentalist. I'm not sure what the relevance of this question is. Obviously, you've hit it right on; the first time you coin a word, it's defined by what you used it to refer to.But the Bible doesn't predate the languages it's been written in, so why is that an issue?

I had a hard time taking in literaly until I actualy read the bible from front to back. reading every aspect of the old testiment and seing how it all fits together opened my eyes to how it all worked out. It took that kind of effort for me to understand. I must admit, it did also take an open mind. now I feel as though I see clearly.This site: http://evolution.no-ip.net also educated me that that belief was not unfounded.I have put this link in many of my posts. I am beginning to feel like a walking commercial for it. Sorry guys, it is that sugnificant. with the many hours of answers to these questions, just about every conversation I have entered easily points to it. Sorry.

Dynamo, one thing you will find around here is that people come here to debate one another, not a website, not a list of Hovind videos.Please pick a thread and start discussing. Jumping from one topic to the next linking to the Hovind videos is NOT what people come here to see. They want to debate YOU, they want to hear what you find relevant in the videos that pertain to the topic of the thread.I posted these links to you before, please read them.
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