He’s questioning your claim – and in terms of literature and worldviews he’s quite right to do so.
No, it isn’t: the order of events in the first Creation account in Genesis is the same as in the Egyptian creation story, besides a number of other such links.
That’s not even possible. The Chaldeans don’t show up until after the Exodus. They came from the west, part of several waves of migration eastward by ancient Semitic peoples in the eleventh to ninth centuries B.C.E. It is thus likely that the relationship is the opposite of what you stated, i.e. that the Chaldeans obtained knowledge from the Egyptians.
There were no Chaldeans in the area of Ur when Abraham is recorded as having lived; Abraham’s time was over a half millennium prior to the Chaldeans arriving in the region of Ur. “Ur of the Chaldees” is a geographical reference, not an ethnic one; at the time Abraham’s people would have lived in Ur (and departed from there) the land was settled by Sumerians. “Of the Chaldees” was probably added because there were several cities with “Ur” as the first vocable in their name, and the appellation made clear exactly which one was meant.
Which is completely irrelevant here.
No, we don’t know any such thing. Paul tells us in fact that the Law, of which the sacrificial system was a part, was “added because of transgressions”. What transgressions? In the Jewish understanding that Paul would have known, that referred to the sins of the Nephilim and their later versions (Anakim, Rephaim, etc.), which led to, as a major example, the conditions in Sodom and Gomorrah. After Babel, the nations went right back to getting worse, and to protect the people of Israel after the Exodus God gave the Law to keep the people from following that pattern.
If the system had been in place at the time of Cain and Abel, Cain would not have brought an offering of vegetables/fruits.
How is it “problematic” when that’s what they said?
And besides the fact that they wouldn’t have used 2 Peter to interpret the text of Genesis, we’ve been over this before: your claim about what Peter said in that letter cannot be established from that letter.
What is “Old Age earth”? They studied the text of Genesis.
Yes, and they recognized that those cannot be taken literally, given that different books give genealogies for the same people but the genealogies are different. They also understood that ancient genealogies generally only recorded the important people, not everyone.
Just some of the greatest.
I think I’ve given references before, and of course I didn’t bother to write them down (like an idiot), but here’s a reference about one of them:
The creation in Genesis, Maimonides taught, is not primarily intended as a cosmogony (that is, as a scientific description of the way the world came to be in every particular detail) but rather as a cosmology, i.e., a description of the structure and order of God’s creation.
Quite so, and I thought of that one because I once needed a tire changed and couldn’t do it myself because I was undergoing an anxiety attack due to the blowout – I obviously managed to keep my vehicle under control and got to the side of the road, but that was the extent of what I was capable of.
BTW, there’s a fourth possibility: when I was traveling once with friends a tire blew and we went to change it, only to discover that the spare was not in the car – the spare was one of the tires. So we used my roadside assistance to get both a tire and someone to put it on.
Turned out the owner had loaned his car to someone the week before; for some reason it had been necessary to replace a tire and the guy forgot to tell the owner.
He had a medical issue alright…standing there dressed in his suit and tie straight from work…i wont say the words I’m thinking as they aren’t appropriate for this forum however the slang word for faeces and brains are found in the 3 word phrase I’m thinking of.
I can assure however, given the street this car was parked on wasn’t long enough for a blowout at speed, and that almost certainly this guy had parked across the road from the train station, the most likely interpretation is that he simply parked his car that morning, caught the train across Sydney harbour to work in the city, came back on the train in the afternoon, and found a flat tyre.
Why would i make the assumption he worked in the city of Sydney…anyone who has ever tried to find parking in the cbd of a major city (which is all of us at some point in our lives obviously) appreciates that this was what the guy most likely did.
Anyway, that’s a little of a sidetrack…sorry Ive probably gotten offtopic now…hmmm now why did i mention this again??? Oh that’s right, an illustration venting my frustration with the intentional choice by some individuals to be lazy and not do things for themselves. It was a kind of metaphor that we should study the bible ourselves instead of relying on the writings of others.
With the exception of scripture, I use the writings of others to add to my beliefs…not to generate them in the first place.
I like Vegetails btw, all of my kids have at some point in their early years spent hours glued to the television watching that program…its not a highly intellectual theological program, however, the concept is fantastic for kids i think. (I wanted to insert a positive criticism to end this post)
You have a tendency to judge other people. Why is that? Have you worked with disabled people? Disabilities are not always visible. Don’t know why you would dispute this.
I would disagree with most of what he is saying. I don’t need to understand how ancient Egyptians or Chaldeans understood the world in order to understand what the Bible is saying. God has promised that the Holy Spirit within us will guide us into truth, if we truly want to know the truth. There are numerous verses to this effect in John 16, 1 Corinthians 2, 1 John 2, etc. We are taught to compare scripture with scripture to arrive at truth, not scripture with what unbelieving Egyptians or Chaldeans believed. You never see Jesus or Paul instructing us to figure out what some ancient non-believing culture thought about something in order to understand the word of God. They just simply declared the word of God.
What Moses wrote was 100% true, or it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter what the Chaldeans thought or Egyptians thought, as every word of God is true.
He also states something to the effect that the Bible is written theologically, but not scientifically. I would say in response that every word of God is true and it will impact any “ology” it speaks to.
I believe this really comes down to whether a person trusts the scriptures or they don’t.
Mt 19:4 “And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female”. Man was made “at the beginning”, not thousands or millions of years later.
But it doesn’t speak to science, does it? Nothing about tectonic movement, speciation, cratering on Mercury, or radioactive decay. And yet, theological preamble concerning literal interpretation always seems to be followed by wild fabrications under the banner of creation science.
I’m sure your familiar with this verse. Ex 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is , and rested the seventh day:
There was morning and evening for each day, so there were days and nights. The earth was rotating so we had equal days and nights. Not much would survive if the days were interpreted to mean a long time like one million years long and so the night was 500,000 years long.
But how can you even read the text if you don’t understand what the words mean and meant to the original authors and audience.
And sure, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us in how to apply scripture to our lives, but if you start claiming the Spirit tells you what the words mean, you replace the inspiration of the author with your personal interpretation and place your interpretation above the original inspiration of the scripture. Dangerous ground indeed.
Ahhh! Given the unlikely case that you believe that’s the only verse Moses wrote, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess: (a) that you believe that Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, (b) that you are a Young Earth Creationist, (c) and that it’s possible, even probable, that you do not subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis in anything but a tentative form and to a very limited extent.
Apart from my curiosity about a few details, such as your denominational membership and current country of residence, I suspect that you and I don’t have a whole lot in common.
No, it doesn’t talk much about science. But, whenever it speaks to geological events (creation, flood) they must be considered true if one believes the Bible is the word of God. The problem with most of science is that it can’t accept the the influence of God in anything. That is why nearly all scientists discount the possibility of a worldwide flood.
Scientists discount the possibility of a recent worldwide flood because there is a clear and detailed record of continuity which extends through the distant past. We know the earth to be old, but it is not just age, but a succession of events and epochs. We know much of what transpired over that time - the climate, the progression of life, the behavior of the magnetic field, the movement of tectonic plates, impact events, the level of the seas, the composition of the atmosphere - all left their mark.
Look at the parallel in Mark 10:6, again quoting the KJV: “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” In both Matthew and Mark, Jesus takes the famous first words of Genesis, “in the beginning” (in Greek, en arche) and tweaks them to “from the beginning” (apo arche). In other words, Jesus reads the creation week as the work God started and continues to do.
God is still making people, male and female. As Jesus addresses a question about divorce, he says that God not only has made each husband and wife (not just their distant ancestors), but also in marriage “God hath joined together” the two so “they are no more twain, but one flesh” (Mt 19:6). Jesus uses the creation week and Eden account to claim that every birth and every marriage is God’s work. Rather than pointing to Genesis as containing historical trivia about people long-dead, he sees in it ongoing truth about us today.
Yes, and every word of Jesus is true – even his many parables. Jesus shows us God, and he shows that God loves communicating with stories, even fiction. I believe Genesis comes from the same God.
The word says “FROM THE BEGINNING OF CREATION God made them male and female”. I would take this to mean man was created at the beginning of creation; not distant years later. That would be how I understand these words, and also the words of Genesis. If I were to say “from the beginning of the creation of the Iphone, it had a touchscreen”. Was the touchscreen there at the beginning of the Iphone, or did it come into existence sometime afterwards?
The thing you need to understand here is that science has rules. Rules that work exactly the same whether you accept the influence of God or not. Rules that are exactly the same for Christians and atheists alike. Rules such as the basic rules and principles of mathematics, measurement, logical consistency and honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information. Rules which, in some cases, are found in the Bible itself.
It is these rules, and not any kind of rejection of the influence of God in anything, that rule out the possibility of a worldwide flood as the origin of the fossil record and the geological deposits that we see in nature. It is these rules, and not any kind of secular or materialistic worldview, that tell us that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and not just six thousand. It is these rules, and not any kind of evolutionary presuppositions or blind assumptions, that allow us to determine what happened in the past without having been there to see it happen.
But according to Genesis, God made humanity at the end of creation – on the last of six days. That’s a hint that it’s not talking about all of creation. Another hint is the context, in which Jesus is talking about divorce and being made “male and female.” This isn’t about rocks or dandelions or starfish or bees. It’s about us – humans. And from the beginning of human creation, God has made us male and female.
I agree that male and female was present from the beginning of humanity. But to more closely match what Jesus says, your quote should be something like, “from the beginning [of iPhones], Apple made them with touchscreens.” That isn’t just a claim that the first iPhones had touchscreens. It also implies that iPhones continue to have touchscreens and be made by Apple. That wasn’t just true in the beginning, but from the beginning to now.
Similarly, Jesus is not only claiming that God made the first people, but all people. God’s creative work can’t be confined to one week. As Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).
This is the exact attitude that results in discrimination against the disabled!
His being in a suit and tie tells you exactly nothing. I dressed up nicely once to testify for someone in court, and if I’d had a flat that day I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it because while I could stand or sit and look quite dignified in my best clothes I was not capable of getting down on my knees and being able to get back up.
Then there was the time I’d just gotten a hip replacement and was forbidden to bend at more than a 30° angle, lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk, or twist more than about 15° to either side. Change a tire? I couldn’t even have undone the nuts that hold it on!
Just because you can’t see a disability doesn’t mean it’s not there. Seriously, you need to change your attitude!
While I’m on a HolyPost kick, I might as put in this plug for it as well: Kaitlyn Schiess just releasted a “getting schooled by Kaitlyn” episode about “Changing people’s minds”. And it too is (I think) only available to subscribers since it is labeled as “Holy Post Plus”. But having listened to it, I sure wish I could share it here too. I’ll just content myself with summarizing one particular thought in it that made an impression on me.
She emphasized that our logical / theological frontal assaults (my own terms there) on people that disagree with us rarely have any effect on getting people’s minds changed because for so many there is really a deeper issue of maintaining community / relationship / belonging that is at least as important (if not more!) than whether one’s logic works or doesn’t. And when they get signals from you that the thing you’re trying to convince them about is very important to you and your community, what they hear is that their importance to you (or your community) is contingent on them seeing things the same way you do. In other words: DANGER! They won’t be accepted here, thinking the way they do. So they are driven back deeper into their own already-affirming community, even if it is again … only because they think ‘correctly’ (according to that community) - but since they already think that way, they are already safe in that community. Until somebody can feel safe around you - that your love for them isn’t contingent on their having all the rigtht answers (according to you), they will always just retreat back into their own sources / talking points. This kind of retreat can afflict both sides.
If you can’t bring yourself to imagine that any of the above might apply to you and your tribe - then just think about how perfectly it applies to everybody else - and that will get you 99% of the way there. Then at some point an internal light bulb will come on for you … hmmm!