The Literal Genesis Account of Creation

So you don't have anything to say about the topic?

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No name calling. Granted I haven't read the entirety of this debate, but mocking someone isn't necessary.As for their point, their point stands even though they used a non-existent word. You replenish something after it has been depleted.The only reason the two chapters would differ is if either it is a paradox (definition, something that appears contrary but is in fact true), or the entire thing was written by different people who had no connection with each other.What kind of fool would write Genesis 1, and then write a seemingly contradiction in Gen.2? There has to be a reason. Either the person who was writing had drunk one too many ales, or the two accounts actually agree.I'm going to read some of the other discussion on this, hopefully what I've said wasn't off topic, or had been said already.

Or they weren't written by the same person. And they were written relatively far apart in time.

The Jewish Torah includes Genesis, no? According to that, genesis was written by Moses. If it wasn't and if it was written by different people, then why were they both included? Why do they reference the same God? They believed the same thing, unless you are saying that two completely different accounts somehow wormed their way into multiple religious texts.The Hebrew Pentateuch was written a long time ago, and has been part of Jewish belief for a long time. I hope this clarifies, sorry gotta jet.

Some critics will argue that the books of the Bible are fraudulent. The notion is that approximately four centuries after Moses the book of Exodus was written a few centuries after Moses the book of Deuteronomy was written and later the book of Leviticus. The critics claim that the same people who wrote these books attributed them to Moses for the sake of adding weight to the documents.This is a baseless theory and nothing more. It was spawned by the pride and ignorance of men wise in their own eyes. Three lines of testimony completely demolish their faithless theory.First is the fact that we have absolutely no ground for this theory beyond the imagination. It is not the result of having discovered certain facts and drawn empirical conclusions from them. No, it is merely a case of devised theories which suit particular philosophies and vanity. In proof of this, note the testimony of the leading Palestinian archaeologist W. F. Albright who stated “The assumption that pious frauds and pseudepigraphy spurious writing purporting to be by Bible characters”Webster were common in Israel, is without parallel in the pre-Hellenistic Orient. What we find is just the opposite, a religious veneration both for the written word and for oral tradition.”Second, there is the ancient, venerable and unequivocal testimony of Jewish tradition, which carries weight in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. It leaves no room for any pia fraus theory regarding who wrote the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch.Third, and most important of all, we have the testimony of other inspired Bible writers and in particular the testimony of the Son of God himself, Jesus Christ. These prophets, whenever they deal with the subject, unanimously attribute the books of Moses to Moses. And, let it be added, the same is true of other Bible books.The fraud theory, therefore, is an baseless and senseless arguement.

Actually, you have the order wrong.The story in Genesis 1 is actually the younger of the two tales. The Genesis 2 tales are combinations of much older stories.The question though of "why did the redactors of the Bible include two mutually exclusive and contradictory stories of Creation" is a great one.as I pointed out back in Message 224 in this thread, and many other times at EvC, we really do need to understand just why the redactors (and Moshe, even if he did exist did not write the "Books of Moses") include both tales?There are several reasons. One is that the two tales show the evolution of the concept of God by the Hebrews. The earlier God found in Genesis 2 and later is very much like other Gods of the period. It is a personal God, very human, approachable, somewhat bumbling, very anthropomorphic. It is definitely God made in man's image.The God found in Genesis 1 though is quite different. Here we find a supremely confident, assured God, one that creates by an act of will alone, that moves methodically, step by step through the acts of creation.But that God is also transcendent, aloof and separate from that which is created.So why did they include the two stories?We will never know the exact reasons but based on what is included in the rest of the Tanakh, custom likely played a part. Remember, these are the tales that defined a peoples and so including folk tales was an essential part.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Show me where Jesus says that Moses wrote it.

John 5:46American Standard Version
For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me.Amplified® Bible
For if you believed {and} relied on Moses, you would believe {and} rely on Me, for he wrote about Me [personally].Contemporary English Version
Moses wrote about me, and if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me.Darby English Version
for if ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me.Good News Bible
If you had really believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me.International Standard Version
For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for it was about me that he wrote.King James Version
For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.Young's Literal Translation
for if ye were believing Moses, ye would have been believing me, for he wrote concerning me;

Maybe because they are good stories. Why not? Have you read the two stories!? God is very different in them. Why is that so hard to believe? Its a collection of various stories and traditions and folklore, etc. Its obvious to me that one dude did not sit down and crank it out.

You're using a modern English definition which is not relevant to a Jacobean English translation of a Hebrew text. For the "re"plenish point to stand, you would have to show that the Hebrew word implied depletion and that the translators understood it that way for that reason.As far as I know, the Hebrew word doesn't distinguish between "plenish" and "replenish". You're welcome to show otherwise.

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Having said this, I would like to address the relevance of the statement "formless and void" and provide a firsthand illustrate as to why limiting our reasoning to a translation is both self defeating and pointless. The following is an excerpt from a document published by Mark F. Rooker investigating the issues of Creation and the proposed Chaos Theory(site).The words and The words occur together in only three passages of the Old Testament. The word occurs only in combination with , while may occur by itself. The most current and comprehensive discussion of the phrase in reference to cognate Semitic languages as well as biblical usage is evaluated as follows.Hebrew is based on a Semitic root *thw and means "desert."' The term is also a Semitic term based on the root *bhw, "to be empty." . . . The Hebrew term means (1) "desert," (2) "a desert-like place," i.e. "a desolate or empty place" or "an uninhabited place" or (3) "empti- ness." The phrase refers to a state of "aridness or unpro- ductiveness" (Jer. 4:23) or "desolation" (Isa. 34:11) and to a state of "unproductiveness and emptiness" in Genesis 1:2.Thus both the etymological history and contextual usage of the phrase fail to support the view of an unorganized universe. Overstating the force of the phrase "formless and void." Edited by pbee, : typoEdited by pbee, : updated with www reference

I would say nice try if there was any possible way to connect all that jabberwocky with what is actually in Genesis 1:2. In this case we are definitely not talking about a desert, desert-like or most particularly, arid. Let me point out a word that actually is in Genesis 1:2, it is "waters".Do any of you actually READ the Bible?Again, look at what you present.You claim "Thus both the etymological history and contextual usage of the phrase fail to support the view of an unorganized universe. ", yet even the very sources you quote imply just that.Nudder question.Do any of you actually READ what you write?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

We can all read the website for ourselves.
Could you please state the argument in your own words?I'll remind you of the Forum Guidelines:

quote:

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Very good! having identified this should help clarify the applicable context in this verse.On a side note, during a much needed retreat earlier this month, we decided to spend a few weeks out at our cabin in Northern Alaska. I was surprised to find that on our arrival, the lake was deserted. - It is usually swarming with avid fisherman(true story).

Hi pbee. I'm not altogether certain whether your post was a criticism of my post, or if you were just using my post as a way to make a separate point about the phrase "formless and void". Your post doesn't seem to contradict anything I said though, so I'll assume the latter.Desolate and uninhabited is certainly a possible meaning of the word void (as I mentioned before), however formless implies more than just desolate. A desert (or a frozen lake) is void, but it's not formless. Either this word is a bad translation of the original text, or it implies that the earth really was mid-creation as I suggested. In much the same way that you could say that an artists sculpture is "formless and void" when the modelling clay is first picked up.This is in direct contradiction to the point I was responding to, in which "formless and void" was asserted to mean a condition of the earth post creation, a condition which it had reverted to an unspecified time after Gen1:1. The article you quoted from seems to agree, offering a rebuttal to the claim that Gen1:1 refers to the initial creation and "formless and void" refers to a reverted (unintended) condition.