Summations Only

I just report what the Bible actually says Faith and not what I think it really said.Inerrant means incapable of being wrong, again not my definition but rather what the dictionary says it means.Do you have any evidence to support your position?

No, jar, you are deceiving yourself. You read what you think it says but deceive yourself that you're the only one who gets it right even though millions disagree with you, who know how to read correctly.

No one questions the fact that there are lots of people who agree with you Faith, that is not an issue. The issue is can any of them provide support for those beliefs beyond something as silly as "Fifty million Frenchman can't be wrong".I don't read what I think it says, I actually post what it does say.It is just like the 300 or so leading lights of the Christian Cult of Ignorance that signed the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. Did they invite folk to present the overwhelming evidence that the Bible is not factually correct, that there is absolute conclusive evidence that the Biblical Floods never happened, that the Earth is billions of years old and humans are just the result of evolution, that the Exodus never happened as described or that the Conquest of Canaan as described in Joshua is just fiction? Was there any evidence of interest in truth or honesty or reality?Do you have any evidence to support your readings other than the fact that there are people who attempt to explain away the errors, contradictions and falsehoods?Why do you never produce any support for your position other than "well others agree with me"?

Three commentaries I checked (Matthew Henry, JF&B, and David Guzik) all agree that the two refers to unclean animals and the seven refers to three pairs plus one for sacrificing of clean animals, so that the clean would be able to reproduce in greater numbers than the unclean but also have enough for sacrifice.I understood that it had to do with sacrificing the clean animals but hadn't taken into account that it was also so they would be able to reproduce in greater numbers, which makes sense because they were for food. Anyway, I think this should answer your question about the oddness of the numbers.ABE: When you trust the Bible to be true, when you encounter something you don't understand, which has to happen in a text written in such a different age in a culture of different ways of thinking, when you simply trust it and wait without jumping to conclusions you often do get an answer that makes sense and resolves your problem. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Trusting it without testing its accuracy IS jumping to a conclusion.

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When you trust the Bible to be true, when you encounter something you don't understand, which has to happen in a text written in such a different age in a culture of different ways of thinking, when you simply trust it and wait without jumping to conclusions you often do get an answer that makes sense and resolves your problem.

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So when the Bible comes into conflict with what you want to be true you look for excuses to pretend that it doesn't mean what it says. And to someone like you who pays very little attention to what the Bible says - as we've seen in this thread, and elsewhere - that isn't hard.

We understand there are folk that try to make shit up to explain away the contradiction and we understand you check the commentaries and sermons; what we don't understand is why you don't check to see if the Bible says what they claim? Hint. It does not. If it did then they would be out of a job.The stories found in Genesis 6&7 do not say take 2 unclean fowl and 3 pairs plus one of clean fowl. Genesis 6 says take two fowl. Genesis 7 says take seven pairs of fowl.The commentaries are just stuff made up to try to explain away the errors. omissions, contradictions and just plain falsehoods that are found in the Bible and far too often totally ignore what might actually be of interest and importance.Neither of the Biblical Floods ever happened so that is a starting fact.That means we are dealing with myth. Now why are two mutually exclusive myths mushed up together?

There was one and only one Biblical Flood, according to the reasonable and sensible and GROWN-UP reading, and God called Noah to take a male and female pair of every unclean animal and three male and female pairs of every clean animal plus one more for sacrifice, according to the reasonable and sensible and GROWN-UP reading.As a general rule I'm through with trying to prove things to people who have their minds made up against the orthodox understanding of the text. I'll tell you the orthodox understanding and you take it or leave it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The issue is not what some "orthodox understanding" is but rather what the Bible actually says.There was no Biblical Flood. That is fact. Anyone that claims there was a Biblical Flood is simply wrong.The issue is why are the two flood myths different and just mushed together?Once again I will post what the Bible actually says rather than what the commentaries wished it said.Let's start with Genesis 6:

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19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

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20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

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In this story the god character says there will be two of each kind of fowl, a male and a female. No mention of clean or unclean but specifically two of each kind of fowl.Now let's look at the story found in Genesis 7:

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Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

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3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

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In this story the god character gives a whole different set of commands. When it comes to beasts there is a division between clean and unclean with seven pair of clean beasts and only one pair of unclean but again, when it comes to fowls there is no mention of clean or unclean just fowls of the air, just bring them in by sevens.Two stories, two different and mutually exclusive sets of directions.

No, trusting it IS testing it. The more you trust it and the more it comes through for you the more you trust it.

OK. If I understand you correctly, we are going with what the "Bible" actually says...correct?If so, we cannot simply go with three Gospels and ignore the fourth. Who is "He"? Why is this "living Word" the One and Only? Sounds a bit like your Nicene Creed. Why don't people know Him? Why are we comfortable saying He is only human? Why is it that when the bible says what we want it to say we emphasize what the books actually say yet when the Bible does not say what we are comfortable with we cry "redactors"!Why is it that we smugly analyse the books from our armchairs and talk blithely of a "god character" when we also claim to believe in GOD, Creator of all seen and unseen? Why is it that we prefer to believe that God is eternally unknowable? Feel free to elaborate on what you think the book actually means. Nevermind what it says. What possible motive could the author have had in adding new information to the tradition?Why was Jesus thought by some to be a failed Messiah? The same way we can impeach a president. the people obviously thought they knew more about reality than did the prophet.The same attitude continues today.....

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No, trusting it IS testing it. The more you trust it and the more it comes through for you the more you trust it.

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But it doesn't come through for you. We see it quite often. In this thread we've seen that it didn't provide a good set of parallels between the story of Abraham's sacrifice and your beliefs about Jesus. It didn't even specify the mountain where the sacrifice took place or provide any hints that Abraham expected Isaac to be resurrected. Unless you wanted to rant and rave and try to bully people into believing that you had a good argument for inspiration there, it really let you down badly. And that's far from the only example.I guess that's why you care so little about the actual Bible.

Necessary teaching? So you avoid eating unclean animals?Obviously one version is taking clean/unclean into account, and the other isn't. This is because a single story became two similar stories in two different traditions created when an ancient Jewish community split (the exile). One tradition came to develop or emphasize the concept of clean versus unclean and incorporated that into their version of the story, and the other tradition did not. When the two communities recombined (return from exile) their divergent stories were merged into one.But the contradiction remains. In one passage God instructs Noah to bring one pair of birds aboard the ark, in another passage seven pairs. I can't make out what the first part of this means, but you're only being asked to to support your claims with evidence. You first claimed there are no contradictions in the Bible, then you qualified it that there are no contradictions for teachings that matter, then you claimed that even this teaching you don't follow matters, so we not only don't see much evidence, we don't even see much sense.--Percy

Sorry Phat but other than misrepresenting what I have said, what does any of that have to do with the topic?

That makes no sense. I had never read this passage in the King James version before, so here it is: Most translations say seven pairs and one pair, and the KJV's "by sevens, the male and his female" can only mean seven male/female pairs, but a literal translation of the Hebrew from the NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament, vol. 1 has it this way: "From-every-of the animal the clean you take with you seven seven male and mate—of-him"Seven seven"? Seems like it defies translation, but "number number" (literally a pair of numbers) must have been a colloquial way of saying "pairs". So "three three" would mean three pairs, "twelve twelve" would mean twelve pairs, and so forth.So "seven seven" means seven pairs, not three pairs plus one. You are assuming what you are trying to prove. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible. You can't assume the Bible is true in order to prove the Bible true. You need external evidence for that.--Percy