You aren’t, since what you ssy isn’t sekf-evident.
Then how did the authors of Genesis get it so wrong?
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Dear James,
thank you for being candid about what you believe, it confirms what I suspected, but hearing it directly from you is preferable.
Thus we will just have to agree to disagree.
God Bless,
jon
We can agree to disagree about beliefs and opinions, Jon, but this is not about beliefs and opinions; it is about facts, evidence and honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no-one is entitled to their own facts.
I don’t actually care how old the Earth is, or who or what did or did not evolve from what. I’m satisfied that the Bible can handle it either way, and that Jesus Christ is Lord no matter what. But it really, really upsets me when I see people who call themselves Bible-believing Christians spreading blatant demonstrable falsehood and misinformation in the name of Christ. And when they respond to correction by casting aspersions on the faith of those who are bringing that correction, I’m sorry but that is not something that I can accept.
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Dear Ron,
yes, I agree, there is nothing that contradicts rigorous operational science, nor would I expect it to ever, anywhere in the Holy Bible.
Ron, it is not a matter of anyone’s dogma, it is simply the reality, it is a fact.
What ‘the church’ said is surely irrelevant. Wasn’t it the High Priest and other Jewish leaders that called for the execution of Jesus. It is not what the church says that is relevant, it is what the Holy Bible clearly states , it is what God teaches us, that matters. Galileo was correct, the church made up of mere men was wrong. The Holy Bible has never taught Geocentrism, that is merely a man made belief, just as deep time and evolution are man made beliefs. It is far wiser to trust the words of the Holy Scriptures than to trust the fallible beliefs of men, that time and time again are shown to be incorrect. Put your faith in God’s Word, not man’s beliefs.
That may be your belief Ron, but I choose to trust the Holy Bible, that the Earth is about 6,000 years old since creation and the flood of Noah’s day was Global in extent, exactly as the sacred Holy Scriptures tell us. I have no doubt that distant galaxies are extremely old; it may well be discovered that the Earth is in a gravity well, consistent with Einsteinian relativity, that causes time to pass at different rates relative to each other in accordance with their velocity and gravitational position in the universe.
Trusting in faith that the Holy Bible is faithful, accurate and True, does not make me willfully blind.
God Bless,
jon
Dear James,
thank you for your reply. Of course this is about beliefs, I trust the Holy Bible to be accurate and faithful and True, I believe the Holy Bible to be clear and unambiguous about the vitally important matter of how the creation came into being, when it came into being, how man and life came into being, how death death entered the perfect creation through sin, and most importantly, WHY we need the Gospel of salvation to free us from the debt of death we owe to our maker for the sin we are born into and the sin we commit freely of our own free will.
Science is a noble and wonderful career, and it is very rewarding, but please James, don’t put science on a pedestal above the Holy Bible. As knowledge increases, things that we once believed were fact, can turn out to be falsified, and they are discarded. Scientific endeavour is replete with examples of flawed research, dishonest claims, incorrect conclusions.
It is important you comprehend that science is NOT the ultimate authority for a person professing to be a born again Christian, the Holy Bible is the ultimate authority.
God Bless,
jon
It’s as simple as this, Jon.
There are rules that you must follow when accounting for the physical evidence that we see in God’s creation around us.
These are not just the rules of science. They are the rules of basic honesty. Honesty has rules too.
Flouting or ignoring the rules in order to try and make evidence fit your doctrine, when quite clearly it does not, is NOT making the Bible the ultimate authority over science. It is LYING.
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Dear James,
what rules are you accusing me of having flouted?
I believe in the honest rigorous practice of science always, that is a given, and there is an ever growing number of honest born again Christian, world class science researchers who precisely follow established procedures and protocols rigorously, who believe as I do, that the Holy Bible can be trusted to say what it ever so clearly says, right from the very first verse.
So why do you continue on and on about rules, it is you that is the one casting the aspersions?
There are a growing body of scientists throughout the world who are Holy Bible believing Christians, who believe the Creation and Global Flood accounts as they are written as real historic events; that reality really doesn’t give you open and free licence to bash everyone, who has that belief, over the head with accusations that they are not following established procedures and protocols rigorously and honestly. Calling fellow science colleagues dishonest, just because you have a different belief, (as it is couched in an entirely different worldview), is dishonest.
God Bless,
jon
conventional =/= operational.
Galileo’s interlocutor, Cardinal Bellarmine, on solid exegetical grounds, disagreed. Exactly like you, he thought it self evident that scripture affirmed an ancient cosmology.
However, it is different to want to affirm that in reality the sun is at the center of the universe and only turns on itself, without moving from east to west, and the earth is in the third heaven and revolves with great speed around the sun; this is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false.
I say that, as you know, the Council [of Trent] prohibits interpreting Scripture against the common consensus of the Holy Fathers; and if Your Paternity wants to read not only the Holy Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing on the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world. Consider now, with your sense of prudence, whether the church can tolerate giving Scripture a meaning contrary to the Holy Fathers and to all the Greek and Latin commentators.
It is already discovered that the Earth is not.
No. Shutting your eyes to the evidence for the age and history of the universe makes you willfully blind.
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Dear Ron,
I would like to read that paper, citation please?
God Bless,
jon
I won’t debate your first and third points, but I have to correct your double negative mistake in the second: There is no professor of Hebrew or OT who BELIEVES the numbers in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world.
Allow me to draw your attention to an 1890 essay by William Henry Green, professor of OT at Princeton Theological Seminary. He shares all your assumptions: Moses wrote the Pentateuch and the text of the Bible is inspired and inerrant. He also believed that Scripture interprets Scripture, yet he demonstrates from Scripture alone the opposite of your conclusion.
A few selections:
>It can scarcely be necessary to adduce proof to one who has even a superficial acquaintance with the genealogies of the Bible, that they are frequently abbreviated by the omission of unimportant names. In fact, abridgment is the general rule
>The omissions in the genealogy of our Lord as given in Matthew 1 are familiar to all. Thus in verse 8 three names are dropped between Joram and Ozias (Uzziah), viz., Ahaziah (2 Kings 8:25), Joash (2 Kings 12:1), and Amaziah (2 Kings 14:1); and in verse 11 Johoiakim is omitted after Josiah (2 Kings 23:34; 1 Chron. 3:16); and in verse 1 the entire genealogy is summed up in two steps, “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
>Other instances abound elsewhere; we mention only a few of the most striking. In 1 Chronicles 26:24 we read in a list of appointments made by King David ([*1], Chron. 24:3; 25:1; 26:26), that Shebuel [*1], the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, was ruler of the treasures; and again in 1 Chronicles 23:15, 16, we find it written, “The sons of Moses were Gershom and Eliezer. Of the sons of Gershom Shebuel was the chief.” Now it is absurd to suppose that the author of Chronicles was so grossly ignorant as to suppose that the grandson of Moses could be living in the reign of David, and appointed by him to a responsible office. Again, in the same connection (1 Chron. 26:31), we read that “among the Hebronites was Jerijah the chief;” and this Jerijah, or Jeriah (for the names are identical), was, according to 23:19, the first of the sons of Hebron, and Hebron was (v. 12) the son of Kohath, the son of Levi (v. 6). So that if no contraction in the genealogical lists is allowed, we have the great-grandson of Levi holding a prominent office in the reign of David.
>A still more convincing proof is yielded by Numbers 3:19, 27, 28, from which it appears that the four sons of Kohath severally gave rise to the families of the Amramites, the Izharites, the Hebronites, and the Uzzielites; and that the number of the male members of these families of a month old and upward was 8600 one year after the Exodus. So that, if no abridgment has taken place in the genealogy, the grandfather of Moses had, in the lifetime of the latter, 8600 descendents of the male sex alone, 2,750 of them being between the ages of thirty and fifty (Num. 4:36).
>proceeding to inquire, whether the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are necessarily to be considered as complete, and embracing all the links in the line of descent from Adam to Noah and from Shem to Abraham. And upon this I remark —
>1. That the analogy of Scripture genealogies is decidedly against such a supposition. In numerous other instances there is incontrovertible evidence of more or less abridgment. This may even be the case where various circumstances combine to produce a different impression at the outset. Nevertheless, we have seen that this first impression may be dissipated by a more careful examination and a comparison of collateral data. The result of our investigations thus far is sufficient to show that it is precarious to assume that any biblical genealogy is designed to be strictly continuous, unless it can be subjected to some external tests which prove it to be so. And it is to be observed that the Scriptures furnish no collateral information whatever respecting the period covered by the genealogies now in question. The creation, the Flood, the call of Abraham, are great facts, which stand out distinctly in primeval sacred history. A few incidents respecting our first parents and their sons Cain and Abel are recorded. Then there is an almost total blank until the Flood, with nothing whatever to fill the gap, and nothing to suggest the length of time intervening but what is found in the genealogy stretching between these two points. And the case is substantially the same from the Flood to Abraham. So far as the biblical records go, we are left not only without adequate data, but without any data whatever, which can be brought into comparison with these genealogies for the sake of testing their continuity and completeness.
>2. Is there not, however, a peculiarity in the construction of these genealogies which forbids our applying to them an inference drawn from others not so constructed? The fact that each member of the series is said to have begotten the one next succeeding, is, in the light of the wide use of this term which we have discovered in other cases, no evidence of itself that links have not been omitted. But do not the chronological statements introduced into these genealogies oblige us to regard them as necessarily continuous? Why should the author be so particular to state, in every case, with unfailing regularity, the age of each patriarch at the birth of his son, unless it was his design thus to construct a chronology of this entire period, and to afford his readers the necessary elements for a computation of the interval from the creation to the deluge and from the deluge to Abraham? And if this was his design, he must, of course, have aimed to make his list complete. The omission of even a single name would create an error.
>**But are we really justified in supposing that the author of these genealogies entertained such a purpose? It is a noticeable fact that he never puts them to such a use himself. He nowhere sums these numbers, nor suggests their summation. No chronological statement is deduced from these genealogies, either by him or by any inspired writer. There is no computation anywhere in Scripture of the time that elapsed from the creation or from the deluge, as there is from the descent into Egypt to the Exodus (Exod. 12:40), or from the Exodus to the building of the temple (1 Kings 6:1).** And if the numbers in these genealogies are for the sake of constructing a chronology, why are numbers introduced which have no possible relation to such a purpose? Why are we told how long each patriarch lived after the birth of his son, and what was the entire length of his life?
>5. The structure of the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 also favors the belief that they do not register all the names in these respective lines of descent. Their regularity seems to indicate intentional arrangement. Each genealogy includes ten names, Noah being the tenth from Adam, and Terah the tenth from Noah. And each ends with a father having three sons, as is likewise the case with the Cainite genealogy (4:17-22). The Sethite genealogy (chap. 5) culminates in its seventh member, Enoch, who “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” The Cainite genealogy also culminates in its seventh member, Lamech, with his polygamy, bloody revenge, and boastful arrogance. The genealogy descending from Shem divides evenly at its fifth member, Peleg; and “in his days was the earth divided.” Now this adjustment of the genealogy in Matthew 1 into three periods of fourteen generations each is brought about by dropping the requisite number of names, it seems in the highest degree probable that the symmetry of these primitive genealogies is artificial rather than natural. It is much more likely that this definite number of names fitting into a regular scheme has been selected as sufficiently representing the periods to which they belong, than that all these striking numerical coincidences should have happened to occur in these successive instances.
>It may further be added that if the genealogy in Chapter 11 is complete, Peleg, who marks the entrance of a new period, died while all his ancestors from Noah onward were still living. Indeed Shem, Arphaxad, Selah, and Eber must all have outlived not only Peleg, but all the generations following as far as and including Terah. The whole impression of the narrative in Abraham’s days is that the Flood was an even long since past, and that the actors in it had passed away ages before. And yet if a chronology is to be constructed out of this genealogy, Noah was for fifty-eight years the contemporary of Abraham, and Shem actually survived him thirty-five years, provided 11:26 is to be taken in its natural sense, that Abraham was born in Terah’s seventieth year. This conclusion is well-nigh incredible. The calculation which leads to such a result, must proceed upon a wrong assumption.
>On these various grounds we conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world.
All of that written in 1890.
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Starlight and Time is the Big Bang
Note that time dilation for deep space Type 1A supernovae has been measured against distance, and nothing comes close to Humphrey’s notions.
More fundamentally, there is no distant starlight problem, as the billions of years it took the light from deep space to reach us presents no issues for conventional science.
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How you appeal to “assumptions” for starters.
Making claims about the assumptions behind radiometric dating that are over-simplified, over-generalised, out of date, or simply factually untrue. Have you read up about isochron dating yet?
Crying “assumptions” without explaining how the assumptions could have been violated in a young earth timescale in such a way as to produce the same end results that we see in reality.
- How do you get significant quantities lead into a zircon crystal in only six thousand years?
- How do you get 80 million years’ worth of radiometric results in the Hawaiian islands to correlate with the rate of continental drift as measured directly by GPS in only six thousand years?
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That’s an addition to the text – it is forcing a certain modern worldview onto the scriptures, one that the scriptures do not claim.
That is also an addition to the text, something that cannot be found in the scriptures. It is an application of a certain human philosophy to the scriptures.
Barr was wrong. This is acknowledged almost universally in the case of the opening Creation account, not so much for the rest of chapters 2-11. The first chapter is plainly an edited retelling of the generic Egyptian creation story using two different literary types at the same time with three different messages that have a complex relationship (whoever penned it was a literary genius), which pretty much means it wasn’t intended as history. Sure, you can find a scholar here or there who holds with Barr, but in general the consensus is that the opening chapters are "mythologized history” or “mythistory” (credit to William McNeill), a category of writing where historical events are portrayed in mythological terms in order to convey a deeper message than “this happened”.
Your syllogism is in error. It contains an unstated assumption, namely that the definition of “truth” as held in a modern scientific worldview must apply to ancient literature and indeed constrain the actions of God the Holy Spirit.
To be rigorous in applying your view, you must hold that the story of the Good Samaritan actually happened, along with all the other takes Jesus spun to make ideas come alive.
But you are confused – it’s elementary that you are imposing your modern humanistic worldview onto the scriptures, without ever bothering to ask if that worldview even applies to the scriptures (it does not).
The deception is that your modern scientific worldview has anything to do with the text of the scriptures. They do not support your science-oriented insistence that truth must be conveyed in ways that are 100% accurate in historical and scientific detail.
Among others, yes – and none of those names fit the actual literary types.
Why it should be surprising that ancient peoples had their own types of literature that are alien to us baffles me. The insistence that ancient literature has to fit one of our categories is blind cultural imperialism.
As far as scholars can tell, the ancient near east had no concept that matches what we could call “real history” (Barr’s fatal error). The closest is “mythistory”, mythologized history, where the “history” aspect does not match what we mean by the term today.
Exactly!
Dear Jay,
thanks for your thoughts, they’re appreciated, I don’t have a lot of time at present, but will do my best to respond to the first matter that you have addressed.
The article at:
clearly indicates that many university professors disagree.
From the article:
Dr John R. Howitt, a personal friend of mine … wrote to appropriate professors in nine leading universities, asking, “Do you consider that the Hebrew word yom (day), as used in Genesis 1, accompanied by a numeral should properly be translated as
-
a day as commonly understood,
-
an age,
-
either a day or an age without preference?”
‘Oxford and Cambridge did not reply, but the professors at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Toronto, London, McGill, and Manitoba replied unanimously that it should be translated as a day as commonly understood. Professor Robert H. Pfeiffer of Harvard added, “of twenty-four hours” to his reply.’
Perhaps you would also benefit from reading the article at:
If I get the time, I will try and respond to the rest of your post.
God Bless,
jon
- The translation of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary Hardcover – December 18, 2018 by Robert Alter (Author) that Young Earth Creationists will refuse to read.
- Samples:
Here’s a side-by-side comparison chart showing some of the most striking differences between Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible (2018) and typical YEC-favored translations (KJV/ESV/NIV). I’ve chosen passages from Creation (Gen 1–2) and Flood (Gen 6–9) where the differences matter most.
Alter vs. Traditional Translations (Genesis)
| Passage | Alter (2018) | KJV / ESV / NIV | Why YECs Dislike Alter’s Rendering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gen 1:2 | “the earth then was welter and waste, and darkness over the deep…” | “the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” | Alter stresses chaotic imagery (tohu va-bohu), not a neutral “formless” stage. This leans toward mythic poetry, not science. |
| Gen 1:14 | “…lights in the vault of the heavens… for signs and set times and for days and years.” | “…lights… to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons…” | Alter highlights calendar/festival function, not “measuring chronology” — undermines YEC chronological literalism. |
| Gen 2:7 | “the LORD God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils… and the human became a living being.” | “…formed man of the dust of the ground… and man became a living soul.” | Wordplay (“human/humus”) treats Adam as a literary pun. Avoids “soul,” which YECs tie to theology. |
| Gen 2:19 | “…the LORD God fashioned from the soil every beast of the field…” | “…out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field…” | Alter translates freshly but stresses the same soil link as Adam — literary parallel, not scientific taxonomy. |
| Gen 3:1 | “Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the beasts of the field…” | “…the serpent was more subtle/crafty than any beast…” | Alter frames serpent as trickster, not necessarily Satan. Undermines YEC identification of serpent = devil. |
| Gen 6:19–20 | “…two of each you shall bring into the ark…” (notes: different sources say “two” vs. “seven pairs”). | “…two of every sort shalt thou bring…” (KJV; ESV similar, NIV smooths tension). | Alter openly notes contradictory instructions — YECs harmonize to preserve “inerrancy.” |
| Gen 7:11 | “…on this day all the wellsprings of the great deep burst forth and the casements of the heavens were opened.” | “…the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” | Alter’s poetic “casements” underscores mythic imagery, not literal hydraulics. |
| Gen 7:17 | “…and the waters multiplied and bore the ark upward…” | “…the waters increased, and bare up the ark…” | Alter’s phrasing highlights literary flow; he also comments on flood duration contradictions (40 vs. 150 days). |
- Alter: presents Genesis as artful Hebrew literature with seams, wordplay, and mythic resonance.
- YEC translations: smooth over those features to present a plain, harmonized history.
- This is exactly why YECs won’t read Alter: his work forces acknowledgment of complexity and human artistry in the text.
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I covered the speed of light a long time ago with @Burrawang, and back then he came up with some silly YEC alternative science solution. I’m too lazy to look it up, but he obviously just Googled his sources and went copy-pasta.
To borrow from someone who posts here . . .
The Genesis story has a man named Man, a woman named Living created from a rib, a tree that gives knowledge of Good and Evil, another tree that gives immortality, a serpent that talks, and a magical garden where God moves about. You think this sounds like a historical narrative? Wow.
I taught middle school English for a while, and the curriculum required teaching the difference between fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, myth, legend, etc. If I went through the required curriculum for six weeks and then presented Genesis 2-3 to a group of kids who were unfamiliar with the story, I promise they would name the genre as myth. If they didn’t, I’d frankly fail them. It’s not a hard test, even in English translation.
I’ve summarized some of those conclusions – many from Hebrew scholars – in the first section of the excerpt below. The second section, “I kissed dating creation goodbye,” shows a few good reasons why the days shouldn’t be read as normal days. Spoiler alert: one of those reasons is Jesus.
Good to see you’re getting Adam Is Us published. Congrats! I lost motivation on Becoming Adam, Becoming Christ when I realized it’s nearly impossible to change a person’s religious opinion, particularly an Evangelical’s. Let us know when it’s available.
I see absolutely no logical or honest way to somehow insert billions of years of ‘deep time’ and ‘evolution’ into the creation account whatsoever.
Hence the ONLY way that the author of Genesis could possibly know what occurred in the beginning is through being inspired by God Himself
Bypassing your assumptions, let’s grant the premise and make an analogy based on scripture. The only way the author of Revelation could possibly know what happens in the future is by being inspired by God Himself. Yet the vision is presented in complex symbolic terms, not historical narrative. Seems to me the same would apply to “Moses” being granted a vision of the past, unless you think of the author as a typist with God dictating the text. That’s another problem …
It also has not gone unnoticed that scriptural illiteracy seems to be a pre-requisite for many evangelicals here in the U.S. to buy into all the current anti-biblical, conspiratorial nonsense that they have made themselves so gullible toward.
True
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That does not reflect the stated position of scientists. Of the Christian scientists and geologists I’ve encountered, there are none that do not accept an ancient Earth.
Geology Society of America
The evolution of life on Earth stands as one of the central concepts of modern science that is accepted by the scientific community. Two centuries of research in geology, paleontology, and biology have produced an increasingly detailed, consistent, and robust picture of how life on Earth evolved.
Australian Academy of Science
The theory of evolution has been extensively tested, and represents our best current understanding of the development of biodiversity around the globe
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science.
American Anthropological Association
The principles of evolution have been tested repeatedly and found to be valid according to scientific criteria.
There is no purported evidence for a young Earth that is not tainted with misrepresentation and falsehood, and anyone qualified in science who maintains otherwise is culpable as they have the training to know better.
The study of the Earth’s history is based on operational science.
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Hey – it mentions “royal chronicle”! Nice to see the term is still around.
Nice piece – I bookmarked it.
Yes, because you think that the Holy Spirit was constrained to inspire Moses to use a MSWV for his writing rather than Moses’ own worldview.
Inspiration is not a heavenly download into someone’s brain.
Nicely put. It isn’t that I read ancient Hebrew that makes me competent to pronounce on Genesis, it’s that I have studied ANE worldview, literary forms, etc., and so recognize that the opening chapters of Genesis are not meant as history.
Especially when adding humanistic interpretations to the text.
Only to those determinedly ignorant of ancient Hebrew language, culture, worldview, and history.
The first is an addition of human philosophy; it has nothing to do with the second.
An interesting thing about royal chronicle is that while in themselves the details are not intended to be taken literally (e.g. “the king went and fought against Ur” doesn’t even mean that the king was present), for understanding the account they should be taken literally *within the account*.
The author intended it to be read as the literary type he used – neither of which happen to be ones that we have today.
False – and it is a dangerous thin to lie about fellow Christians!
Many of the church Fathers disagree with you. Many theologians and other scholars down through history disagree with you. Indeed, from looking at the actual literary type that is used in Genesis 1, Moses disagrees with you.
No, you’re not – you’re saying what is intellectually comforting – and intellectually lazy, since by demanding that Genesis 1 be read as twentieth-century newspaper reporting you excuse yourself from the work of actually studying the Word.
Excellent point!
There is no timeframe given. The days are a literary device common to both royal chronicle and temple inauguration.
Neither of those have anything to do with the opening Creation story – in that, John Walton is correct; this isn’t about material creation. The opening Creation story, which is both royal chronicle and temple inauguration, has a lot in mind, but the above items aren’t in that basket.
Why are you so insistent that the theology Moses presented by tossed in the trash?
Odd that numerous scholars, all more knowledgeable in every relevant field than you, had no problem finding millions, billions, or even a trillion years, or an indeterminate but “uncountable” stretch of years.
Theologically there is a huge load of thought in that simple phrase. My bet is that you have no clue as to what that phrase is actually saying.
Bot we do know what that culture was; we have so much evidence that much of it hasn’t even been translated yet!
God has bestowed such an abundance of knowledge in this area that it is astounding.
Yet you spit on His beneficence.
You failed to even understand the article!
For what it’s worth, I’ll note in passing that in a course on mental programming we learned that the repetition of such phrases is a tool for self-reinforcing a mental construct that generally had/has little resemblance to reality. The method was used extensively in communist Romania.
There is no global flood in the text of Genesis. In context, the flood is of the known world.
Which is why many ancient writers realized that it was obvious that these could not be ordinary days – they had to be “divine days”, measurable only by God.
What really strikes me at this point is what a lousy education about the Bible you display. You dare to be a teacher, yet failed to study the basics!
Expertise in ancient Hebrew is not enough to get a clue about the intent of the author.
Yes, you are – you treat AiG and similar sites as authoritative, you hold all the YEC beliefs; you are thus a YECer.
No, you believe the Bible to be a set of something like twentieth-century newspaper reports. You ignore that it is ancient literature, you ignore the history and culture and language, and you insist that the Holy Spirit was bound to have the text be satisfactory to your limited modern worldview.
So what you believe is that your misunderstanding of the Bible is true. You are in the same basket as the Jews who expected Jesus to fight Rome.
You answered the question: you treat each section according to its genre. But doing what you do, forcing the text to fit a MSWV, is guaranteed to get things wrong; nothing in the Bible was written within such a worldview.
Interesting observation.
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Not everybody has a deity so small as to treat the universe like a farm with toy animals.
Given that Psalms and other passages portray predators killing and eating prey as something God does, we must presume that this process qualifies as good – and thus there is no reason to believe it was not good, i.e. that God was not engaging in that relationship, before the Garden.
Amen! Nothing in the scriptures actually tells us those things, either, unless you count the detail that the waters rose by fifteen cubits and covered the high hills.
Hear, hear!
It is something that should be rebuked in the Name of Jesus.
No, it’s a made-up view that can be shown to have developed due to differences in meanings of words as the scriptures were translated from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and finally to English. The fact is that nothing in the Bible warrants assigning any age to the Earth – especially since ancient scholars, on the basis of studying Genesis 1, concluded that the Earth is of uncountable age and the universe is more ancient still.
So why do you put so much effort into lying about what the Bible says? And yes, you do: by turning the Bible into something it is not, and teaching from that basis, you are inevitably lying about the scriptures.
Nor does it teach a young Earth.
Was first discovered in the Bible; science only clued to it later.
What you don’t get is that for most here, you are the one putting faith in man’s beliefs.
The scriptures tell us no such things. Logically that means you are either ignorant, deeply misled, or lying.
But you don’t – you trust in a caricature of the Bible that is formed by forcing the text to fit a MSWV. If you would bother to investigate the ancient Hebrew worldview, you’d discover that you are willfully trampling on and throwing out most of the theology of the text.
“Accurate” is a word that reveals that you are forcing a modern worldview onto the inspired text: that is not a part of the ancient Hebrew definition of “true”.
And yet you set up a different authority, an idol – your modern worldview – above the Bible.
And yet you consider AiG and similar sites that are proven consistent liars to be valid sources!
But you have never bothered to actually ask what the text says – you assume it has to fit your modern worldview and you read it that way.
And that it taught that everything is made of four elements.
I recall a rabbi with a PhD in OT studies once remarking that generations skipped in genealogies was “usually no more than forty” but “could be as many as seventy”. Of course he was being a bit teasing in using those two numbers, but it drove home a point.
And quite thoroughly done!
It’s nice to read something where the author is inquiring as to what the scriptures indicate that they intend to say rather than imposing an external worldview onto the text.