As an aside, I’m having some difficulty understanding how this forum works. Until I get it figured out I’ll start my post with a reference to the post I’m responding.
In this case Mervin
I do appreciate honest discussion, I have no problem with any attack on my arguments or positions. I will not attack anyone personally, and I won’t respond to personal attacks. It’s the difference between “your idea is as nutty as an old fashioned fruit cake (regrettably the last ones of those I got was lacking in nuts) and “you are nuts” a tiny difference but I think important.
Of course I recognize that my explanation of the creation story is based on my understanding of scripture. However, it on the vein of those who who try to harmonize Genesis with what science has discovered. For example some have said, “a day for God could be a billion of our years.” I believe I seen valid arguments based on science against that and every other explanation I’ve encountered. I’m certainly not asking anyone to accept my explanation, what I would like see is why, based on everything we’ve learned through science, my explanation is flawed. I fully understand that each Christian has an made an accommodation with the creation story. Personally I think it takes more faith to believe in random chance than intelligent design, but again that isn’t part of my brief. If I’m correct, my explanation would stand equal to the “Big Bang” or any other theory.
Again I apologize that I may not get to all the post until Monday. I was a bit worn out by attending a wonderful service for a very dear friend, a 96 year old WWII vet. One of the greatest of that generation. If you’re inclined I would ask prayers for Col Dan Henshaw’s family.
Actually I have it on great authority that the universe was created sometime on December 5, 1948. The mechanics of that creation remain a great mystery since also dead certain that I’ve never been able to visualize that couple engaging in… never mind, even the thought is bothersome.
I am so-inclined. Thanks for sharing, and consider those prayers lifted up.
While I maintain a position that involves recognition of the difference between what scripture affirms, and what you or I understand it to affirm, I again would soften (even deny) any implication found in my words that suggest I think you are wrong about everything! (or that I am right about everything). It sounds like we agree on this and are both doing the best we can to stand behind our opinions, or change them as necessary. One way in which my opinion has changed is that I too (with you) now cast a suspicious eye at the “1 day can equal gazillions of years” formula. And it isn’t science so much that ignites my suspicions (though it may have had a hand in when I first gave those formulas some initial credence). But now from my exposure here to people smarter than I am about scriptures and understanding them and their context rightly, I’m now with you that a day means a day. Because that is what it would have meant in their cultures and times. Yes, I also believe that the earth is older than 4 billion years too - I just don’t try to force room for that concept into a text where it doesn’t belong and would not have been received or understood. So we perhaps still disagree there. And that is fine; I’m not here (I hope none of us are here) to unsettle your faith as you’ve received it. If you have Christ as the cornerstone of your foundation, then we are children of God together, faults, wrong opinions and all.
If there are any specific questions you have about the mechanics of working this forum, feel free to ask.
[added edit; you can edit your own past posts by clicking the pencil icon at the bottom of said post. As I did just now to this post to add some clarification above.]
To quote and tag another’s post, simply select the text you want to import and hit the gray quote button that appears. To direct your reply to a particular user type @ and then the user name and select it from the dropdown menu that appears. This sends a notification to them that you have interacted with them.
It is called arbitrariness. The world and those in the church is rife in it. If you apply a non-literal interpretation (not to be confused with wooden literal-ism) to Genesis, then that should apply to ALL of scripture as well. But Christians reveal their inconsistency when scriptural interpretation collides with their presuppositions.
They can believe what they want, but one thing is clear, is that they are inconsistent when interpreting scripture.
Mr Panub, thanks for your thoughts. How do you interact with someone from another faith and holy book tradition who claims presupposition with regard to science? Do you use science to disagree? What do you say if they would protest that science is fallible? Thanks.
Please explain how you reach this conclusion. The Bible has many genres, and many literary devices are used to communicate truth. Even if you accept a literal interpretation of Genesis, must you then accept all scripture as literal? Is Genesis the one book that dictates how you must read all others? Perhaps you are just saying, “If Genesis isn’t literal, then nothing is literal.” ??? Explain please.
Yes. The Hebrew word “yom” usually translated as “day” in English translations of the Bible (especially the first chapter of Genesis) is actually a very general term for a “period of time”. (As when, for example, we use phrases like “back in the day” or “in that day and age”. If you read Genesis this way, instead of getting the creation of the world in seven 24-hour days, you get a more sensible (to my mind) creation of the universe in seven “ages” (including geological ages for the development of life, etc.) And, in any case, the Hebrew scriptures were never intended to be read literally this way anyway. Much of it is a symbolic narrative whose real meaning lies beneath the literal surface. And the Bible certainly was never intended to be a science textbook…
I know this is a popular contention on certain old earth websites, but it isn’t really backed up by linguistics. Hebrew scholars pretty much agree that in Genesis 1, yom means day, the normal kind. It’s a different construction when it is used idiomatically. See John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 90-91.
Decisions about whether or not a passage should be interpreted figuratively are discourse level decisions and do not come down the semantics of individual words.
I wasn’t basing my interpretation of Genesis on that single word. Merely using It to support the more basic point that Genesis is a symbolic not a literal narrative. This view is also supported by reams of objective Biblical scholarship and interpretation. (As opposed, for example, to Bible-thumping fundie preachers.) You’re arguing that’s it’s supposed to be read as a science textbook? The science of the Earth’s and the universe’s evolution over billions of years is a recent development during the past couple of centuries. It’s completely ridiculous to interpret writings millennia old as having any bearing at all on these relatively recent discoveries.
No, not at all. I think it is a figurative text, I just think that the argument that we know it is a figurative text because of the meaning of the word day is very flawed. It’s a figurative text even if ‘day’ means a normal day.
Mr Panub, thanks for your thoughts. How do you interact with someone from another faith and holy book tradition who claims presupposition with regard to science? Do you use science to disagree? What do you say if they would protest that science is fallible? Thanks.
LOL…Mr. Panub…that’s funny
We ALL have our presuppositions. I use the presuppositional argument on anyone, from Muslims to Jehovah Witnesses. The question is, which presupposition is the correct presupposition to have. With regards to J-dubs. I tell them that they have a presupposition that Jesus is not God therefore they read, and even change the text to fit their presupposition.
As for your question. A person of another faith would never do that, because presuppositional apologetic is rooted in reformed teaching, but hypothetically if the Muslim believed that Allah created Adam and Eve from clay, which they do. I would not use evolution to refute the Muslim.
How else are you accept any scripture if not taken literally? If one does not take it in a literal way, then one cannot know that the bible is full of genres and literary devices. Genesis is the foundation. Genesis 1-11 either directly or indirectly ties into EVERY Christian doctrine that the church has. What is sin, why are we punished for our sin, why did Christ have to die a real physical, bloody, painfilled death etc…
Without the book of Genesis, the bible unravels and Christianity crumbles. There will still be a “God”, but more like a Deist god rather than the Judeo-Christian God
Still have both hands? Jesus literally said," And if thy right hand offend thee , cut it off , and cast it from thee."
The book of Genesis was probably written in final form around the exile or shortly afterwards. We know this because it mentions nations that were not around until that time, and has phases that indicate later recording such as “until this day” as well as other indications. Does that mean the Bible was unraveled until then? If someone only has a New Testament in their language, is their Christianity crumbled? Or if they have no Bible at all, are they doomed?
Some of the early Church Fathers of the second century were happy to treat the Gensis stories as allegorical and signs of relationships rather than history.
I can understand there are those who feel that if you can’t trust Genesis to be absolutely right on everthing then it is a slippery slope to discarding scripture altogether. But for me that is not the case , and seeing Genesis creation stories (there are in fact 2) symbolically is I think a more helpful way to approach scripture.
And when I read that in a literal way. I understand that hell is not a place I want to be.
We know this because it mentions nations that were not around until that time
We know this?? You mean like how King David was a myth until the 90’s?
If someone only has a New Testament in their language
The New Testament makes absolutely NO sense without the Old Testament. All it is telling me, is that this Jew named, Jesus, who is the son of God or God, was ultimately humiliated by being crucified, and that we should follow him referencing some vague reference from some old scripture.
1 “Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him . (Hosea 6:1-2)
In verse 2, the word yôm (day) is used with an ordinal number—the third day. Yet the common interpretation of this passage is both as a Messianic prophesy and the expectation of a long, indeterminate period of affliction and suffering for Israel. The Jews reading this, that is the actual speakers of biblical Hebrew, would have interpreted this use of yôm, complete with an ordinal destination, to specify an indeterminate period.
If Genesis is figurative doesn’t that mean “yom” could be figurative too? Interpreting it as meaning strictly literal, 24-hour days is hardly figurative. I confess I’m no expert, but given the fact that “yom” can have a figurative sense (in a figurative context) lends support to the idea of reading it as an “age” I think. And, after all, reading Genesis literally has caused a lot of problems, including teaching science in in secondary schools. Fundamentalists do, in fact, treat it like a science textbook in their literal reading of it and, I’m sorry, but this simply strikes me as absurd. (And I was one myself once, long long ago…)
Well, there are figurative passages and there are words with figurative senses, but we shouldn’t conflate those two things. My favorite example is when Jesus says “I am the good shepherd,” the word he uses for shepherd, ποιμὴν, has two possible senses: a literal sense, caretaker of sheep and a figurative sense, a pastor. In Ephesians 4:11, ποιμὴν is used in its figurative sense, pastor. But in the Good Shepherd passage, it is used in its literal sense, someone who cares for sheep. Now the whole passage has a figurative meaning, and no one interprets it “literally.” Jesus is talking about loving his people. Our brains figure out this meaning effortlessly, because meaning making is much more than adding up the sum of meanings of individual words. It involves making inferences about the intentions of the speaker and relating what is being said to a shared context and interpreting the most relevant possibility.
It is true that yom has an extended figurative or idiomatic meaning related to an era of time in some passages, but Genesis one isn’t one of them. The passage is interpreted figuratively because there is a clear underlying metaphor that God’s creation is his work. All sorts of anthropomorphic imagery from the domain of work is pulled into the passage, including the seven day work week. But you don’t need to posit special figurative senses of every word in a figurative passage to calculate figurative meaning.
If I say “I hit some bumps in my new job,” you would have no trouble understanding that I’m talking about obstacles or difficulties when I say ‘bumps.’ Calculating that relies on the normal semantics of the word bump, a rough place in the road. We just understand the implicit metaphor that life is like a journey and our brains infer the figurative meaning based on the connections in our brain between the idea of life and the idea of journeys. We don’t have to add a new figurative definition of “bump,” “a problem that makes things difficult in life” to the dictionary to calculate the meaning of the sentence.
I agree it’s absurd to treat Genesis like a science textbook.
You’re too young, Randy. It’s Eddie Murphy on SNL singing “Looking for love (in all the wrong places) …” as Buckwheat from “Our Gang.” Skip to 55 secs or so for the singing part. Pretty funny. https://vimeo.com/74504707
