Yeah I avoid that thread about Paul like the plague.
why, worried it'll challenge some issues of, well, faith?
Paul was a Jew through and through, taught by the Rabbi Gamaliel.
this is the primary bit we're questioning. and we're questioning it because paul's teachings just seem to have nothing to do with judaism, at all. they blatantly misrepresent the jewish faith. however, there are a few ideas that seem plucked straight from greek mythology...
who was personally chosen by the ascended Lord Jesus Himself and taught the gospel by Him and sent to preach it to the Gentiles by the Holy Spirit.
according to luke. who wasn't there to see any of it.
In order to deny all this you have to deny half the New Testament, call its writers all delusional or liars.
ok, in a ranom bible laying around, first one i pick up, the nt occupies pages 735 to 953. that's 218 pages. paul's letters take up pages 862 to 917 (or 55 pages). according to my calculations, that's about a quarter. in fact, almost exactly a quarter.
so, no, we're denying about a quarter of the new testament. although it's closer to 40% if you throw in acts.
As for Moses, My post was about witness authentication of Moses' authority and leadership, as blah blah blah
this is strictly dogmatic crap and i suspect you know it. i could equally as easily claim the same things about muhammed and quran, couldn't i? he's got the trust of millions of muslims, doesn't he? they say god directly imparted this stuff directly to him, right?
He WAS an eyewitness of the events written about
no in genesis he's not. he's not even alive. either during the events themselves, or the writing, take your pick. works both ways.
along with millions of his fellow Israelites
again, not during the events in genesis. in fact, at the END of genesis have something on order of only a dozen families of israelites. the start of each tribe. hardly the multitude that exodus starts out with.
and for you to deny this is to call him a liar and all the Bible writers liars who referred to his Torah as scripture written by him, some of which I footnoted in a post above.
i've got a thread i made reference to earlier tonight along the same lines. it's called "the forgery of deuteronomy." look it up, if you want. deuteronomy presents quite a problem. the text clearly indicates that moses could not have written it. it starts with moses on opposite side of the jordan from the israelites. ie: someone in the promised land wrote it, not moses. what's even more suspicious is that we KNOW, point of fact, that the israelites (or the judah-ites for that matter) did not have this text until the reign of king josiah. it outlines a couple of key theological concerns that josiah impliments, such as destroying every temple but the one in jerusalem. it also (very anachronistically) discusses the hebrews having a KING. genesis has a breif mention or two, but hardly prophesy. and there's no other mention of it in the torah. not in exodus, not in leviticus, not in numbers.
this book is then used as the standard by which israel (as in "not judah" israel of the divided kingdom period) is judged as idolatrous, according to the sin of jereboam. it's only a sin in reference to deuteronomy, and no other book.
so let's review.
1. not written by moses.
2. "lost" until josiah.
3. used to condemn israel.
4. still called part of "the law of moses"
see, what we're dealing with is ATTRIBUTED authorship, and tradition. not literary analysis. also, it brings up another point.
if they didn't have deuteronomy until the reign of josiah, are the references to "the book of the law" including deut? no, obviously not. if they didn't have genesis until 600 bc, did the people who wrote about the law of moses before then include it, do you think?
so are they lying when they talk about the law of moses, or are they simply not refering to it in the modern sense? and are we lying today when we call it "the law of moses" even if it's not laws and not written by moses?
As usual your idea of contradictory accounts is just your own inability to reconcile them as you reject the whole basis of the revelation. I have no trouble reconciling any of them.
nor did i the first dozen times i read it. people on this board assume i just started out hating the bible or something. no, i'm interested in learning the truth, even if it's sometimes dirty. i find this book truly interesting, and i find genesis the most interesting part of it. if i didn't, i'd go read the hitchhikers' guide to galaxy or something.
you see, i started out with the idea that it all lined up perfectly. it has to, right? it's the word of god. not only that, i also started out with the idea that in some way it represented reality. not coincidently, a passage in genesis is the reason i'm a christian. (maybe i shoulda been jewish, come to think of it.) it was the bit about abraham's calling. something there struck me as fundamentally true. and so it piqued my interest.
i've read the whole book a half a dozen times, but some sections i've read many, many more times. and the better translations i got, the more i looked into it, the less it lined up with reality. and the less it lined up with itself. it went, in my mind, from days describing logarithmic periods of creation, to being strictly metaphorical. but you know what? it still didn't work out.
so on my last complete read-through, for my bible class, i decided that i would just leave all my assumptions behind, and see what it was really about. and it's still one of my favourite books.
but my "inability to reconcile" them is not my problem: the texts themselves cannot be reconciled. were plants made before or after humans? were animals made before or after humans?
these are fundamental to understanding the nature of the text itself, and therefor its message. is genesis trying to tell us some boring history of what order god made things in? or is there something else to it? the answer lies in understand WHY those questions didn't matter to the redactors.
i'm not REJECTING revelation, i'm determining the precise nature of it. and it doesn't appear that god is personally imparting text word for word to moses. it looks more like god is telling different people different things that contain the same essential, if vague, truths. both accounts agree that plants and animals were made for humans, they just can't agree on whether god had them set up beforehand or after. both texts tell us that we are like god in some importan respect. one says we're made in his image, and one says our life -- our souls -- come from his breath. one story tells us why we should take saturdays off, and the other why we marry: "it is not good for man to be alone."
these are revelations from god. is the bit about whether there plants before the sun? no, probably not. it's good to know what exactly is the work of men, and what of their work was influenced by some higher power. but it is just plain ignorant and stupid to randomly assume that it's all the words of god literally dictated to however the church tells you it was dictated to, and that that means it's all literally true. it's just ignoring the book itself, and doing a complete disservice to actual truths and revelations involved, not to mention blatantly misunderstanding it.
And plenty of HIGHLY educated people take Genesis as directly inspired by God and authored by Moses.
really? pick up an scholarly book on the torah. i guarantee you that they'll talk about five sources in the torah:
- J: uses "yahweh" or "yahweh elohym" to refer to god.
- E: uses "elohym" alone to refer to god. (probably later than j)
- P: the priestly text. the stuff we skip.
- L: the levitical source.
- D: deuteronomy.
scholars tend to cite AT MOST one of those as moses. probably the j one, since god revealed his name to moses, and j includes exodus.
I posted some HIGHLY EDUCATED AND AUTHORITATIVE commentators on the inspired and trustworthy content of Genesis on the Ham v Ross thread, post #99, in the Miscellaneous forum, but I don't know how to link to it as I can't find out the numbers of the forums and threads.
got any jewish sources? they usually have something different to say about their own book. but i'll look at the ones you've got anyways.
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