KJV says “conception”
NLT says “pregnancy”
NASB has a footnote saying, “lit in your pregnancy”
ASV says “conception”
YLT says “conception”
So certainly it’s not a monolithic “childbirth” or “child-bearing.” That precise word is only used two other times in the text, in Ruth 4:13 (Ruth conceives Obed after Boaz goes to her) and Hosea 9:11 (there will be no birth, no pregnancy, and no conception). In both of those cases, it very clearly means conception. And the root it comes from, used dozens of times, also very clearly means conception.
I don’t know where to look to read up on translators’ decisions – can you point me in the right direction? My only guess is that they changed it because conception isn’t generally painful and childbirth generally is? But I’m happy to reconsider if I can find more info!!
But it’s not. Language is a complex semiotic system. Computers use languages to communicate with other computers and are not conscious. Furthermore some animals use semiotic systems that are rightfully considered at least proto-languages, and many other species’ brains use thalamocortical loops to integrate information across various areas of the brain, which is what scientists claim is the basis for consciousness. Does that mean all conscious species live forever in your paradigm? Consciousness is not a feature unique to humanity and God.
Clearly not the meeting of gametes, since the Hebrews didn’t know about that.
The word translated childbirth וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ and linked with sorrow could possibly refer more generally to having children. But the word linked with pain, תֵּֽלְדִ֣י refers to the physical act of giving birth.
Oh, but it is. The language that computers use is programed language, Computers do not have inner thoughts, nor do they understand the meaning of anything. Understanding and meaning are the purview of self-aware human beings who sometimes program computers with math and statistics to string together zeros and ones to transfer information to other computers. Language translation is another way that computers seemingly use language, but they don’t understand the meaning of the words. It is the programmers that understand.
The mystery of self-aware consciousness is much more profound than most people realize, even scientists. Most simply believe that somehow it just emerged when the brain developed enough synapses and organization. Many believe that computers will become self-aware when they reach that level of development.
In the January issue of Scientific American magazine, on page 48 there is an article titled “The Universe Is Not Locally Real.” I call it to your attention because of what it says about the profound mystery concerning the conscious measurement of physical phenomena.
Anyone who has been around here long enough will know that I like the suggestion that QM may be hinting that the fundamental reality of the universe is information. The infinite mind of God fits that pretty well.
I don’t think this actually means what you think it does. Jesus was still very much physical when he ascended from the disciples…the bible doesn’t say he suddenly changed appearance as he began to rise into the air. As I also stated previously, Jesus had already ascended to the Father prior to meeting in the upper room and speaking directly to doubting Thomas when he said, “put your hand into my side…”
Jesus ascended to the father during the day after he met Mary in the garden, where he said “don’t touch me I have not yet ascended the father” and then meeting in the upper room when he was quite happy for Thomas to physically touch him.
The reason for this if you go back to the sanctuary service is because according to this service the sacrifice had to be accepted…so Jesus attended the Father so that His sacrifice was accepted too. We have to remember, the Old Testament Sanctuary Service pointed towards the coming of the messiah. Everything about that Service had a dual application (past and future).
The spiritual body that you talk about I think refers to us being transformed from sinful earthly bodies that came about as a consequence of sin, into heavenly perfect bodies that Adam and Eve had when they were first created. The bible speaks in numerous places of the restoration of mankind back to our former glory…therefore Adam and Eve had glorious bodies when the were created and before the fall. Many Christians use the fact that Adam and Eve saw that they were naked and covered themselves with leaves from the garden as evidence in support of the sudden change in their appearance. True they were clothed in light/glory prior to the fall…however, that is also an interesting thing about Jesus after he was raised…no one recognised him and I think that is for the same reason as Adam and Eve did not view themselves as being naked before the fall.
this is simply referring to sinful bodies…perishable in this instance is talking about mortality and death. Bodies that are sinful cannot possess the kingdom of God.
We know that when we are raised from the dead (those who are not alive at the second coming), we are transformed into perfect heavenly bodies as those of Adam and Eve when they were first created. I believe the reason for the heavenly referencing is simply to illustrate sinless (without sin) because heaven is not corrupted by sin…only this earth is.
To be really honest, its rather simple all of this stuff about bodies…God created Adam and Eve (a man and a women) in physical sinless bodies. Its blatantly obvious that when God talks about restoring mankind back to Himself and back to the former glory that existed before the fall, that is exactly what is going to happen. People seem to get so hung up on trying to read into bible texts meanings to suit non theological assumptions that they forget what the plan of salvation is actually about.
It goes like this:
God created Adam and Eve and all the world perfect
Mankind was tempted, and sinned, and all of that creation was tarnished with sin
God enacted a PLAN OF SALVATION TO RESTORE HIS CREATION BACK UNTO HIMSELF…TO ITS FORMER GLORY
We must focus on exactly what was lost when sin entered this world, and that is easily understood when one looks at the overall theme of the Bible.
BTW, as an offhand comment that I’m sure a nonchristian would make regarding spiritual bodies…has anyone ever managed to find any references in the bible where spirits toil and tend gardens? I know they can enter people and pigs…but that is possession of another soul. That is not what is happening in heaven after the second coming.
I think 1 Cor 15 means what it says and not what you change it to. It is the same with Genesis, where you simply ignore the parts which don’t fit. What it actually says fits the evidence of what we see all around us and I have no need to change the text to make it fit this nonsensical fantasy of yours. God said to Adam and Eve that on the day they ate the fruit they would die. I have no reason to make God a liar because all the evidence shows that physical death existed for billions of years before Adam and Eve, so that is simply not what God was talking about. Likewise the Paul says the resurrection is to a spiritual body made of the stuff of heaven and not a physical/natural body made of the stuff of the earth. And I have no reason to make Paul a liar because all the evidence shows the resurrected Jesus was not of the earth. I will stick to what the Bible actually says because it agrees with reality and your fantasy world has no appeal to me.
1 Corinthians 15 says no to this quite clearly.
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Our resurrection does not make us like Adam with a physical/natural body but like Jesus who in the resurrection was assuredly a body but it was a spiritual body not a physical/natural body and thus quite different from the first Adam. And I certainly do not think that the change in Adam and Eve due to the fall was a physical change in appearance or that our bodies had become something evil. This frankly sounds like something which has origins in the justification for racism – identifying moral inferiority with physical differences. There is much greater evil and corruption in such ways of thinking and distorting the Bible. And to that I definitely say, no thank you.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
70
As He has been from eternity in an infinity of overlapping incarnations, right?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
71
They new about seeds, samen, semen. They’d have twigged pollen, spores intuitively, if not explicitly for plant breeding.
For those who dont believe we are taken to heaven with real bodies…how do you explain Jesus and satan arguing over Moses body in
Jude 19Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee
I think Pauls statements in 1Cor 15 are not actually meaning we have only a spiritual body in the resurrection…otherwise why the need to argue over Moses body in Jude 1…according to this view, it was being thrown out anyway!
References
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
73
How does that bizarre bit of arcana make Michael Jesus? And can you join up the other dots too please? What’s fictional 120 year old Moses’ corpse got to do with Heaven? Nobody has a wife in heaven of course.
I don’t read Hebrew and I can’t remember where I found this idea (not Walton or Bible Project, but definitely something I was listening to…) – and it sounds like I’m going to have to wrestle with this passage all over again! I thought it all made sense…
Anyway I’ve only got other people’s expertise and online tools like Blue Letter Bible (happy to use another if anybody has a better recommendation) to follow words about in the text.
So it sounds like you’re saying that the first word (in KJV “conception”) is plausibly conception, but the second word (in KJV “bring forth”) is only childbirth? But it looks like it’s also ascribed to men and means more generally having children? I’m sure that’s what the speaker I heard said.
For those that believe that Adam and Eve were created in a single day, nothing I write will make any sense. That view does not accept the millions of years of evolution that started with carbon, and other elements, organizing to eventually produce cells that could reproduce themselves. That, in turn, led to multicellular life around 500 million years ago. The age-old question, which came first the chicken or the egg? is easily answered. Neither, what came first was the single cell that could reproduce itself. If we truly believe Science and Theology can exist in harmony, we must take evolution as the way that God chose to bring us into existence. The evidence is overwhelming in the fossil record. I believe that God accomplished this through his Divine consciousness which eventually led to humanity’s own self-aware consciousness that makes communion with God a possibility.
Nothing? Have you never tried to explain anything except that which doesn’t agree with this one belief? What an exceedingly narrow focus!
Creation can be quite relative. An artist typically creates things without creating the matter of which those things are composed. In general he starts with materials already made by someone else. And what exactly was the “creation of Adam and Eve?” For example, God could have spoken to these two people and named them, all in a single day, and that would mean in one day it went from a world with no Adam and Eve to a world with an Adam and Eve. LOL
Not always. The views on this are quite diverse.
My view is that when it says in Genesis 2
then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
I take this to mean that God made our bodies according to the ways of the earth which are the laws of nature and evolution. But then God spoke to Adam and Eve giving them the inspiration (which literally means “divine breath”) which brought the human mind to life.
Wrong! Before the first cell were interacting chemical cycles. Before that were the stars producing elements through fusion, supernovae, and neutron star collisions. Before that was the Big Bang. And before that were the mathematical space-time laws of nature. And before that (as well as during all that that followed with His involvement in events) was God who designed those laws of nature for the development of life to evolve beings who could have a relationship with Him.
And then, we should ask, why? Why did God do it that way? Is there a reason why God would want beings who come from a long process of development and making their own choices, rather than simply making them the way He wants them in a instant? Compare the relationship you would have with a product of your own design with the relationship you would have with a being which has a life of its own according to its own choices. If we are nothing more than what God has made us to be then that sounds a great deal more like the relationship an author has with the characters in his novels. But if we are a product of our own growth and learning then that would be more like the relationship between a parent and child, don’t you think? Which is the more rewarding and challenging relationship?
For those who don’t believe God is real, and yet speak of God constantly, I would say they have made the word “God” into a tool of rhetoric for wielding power over others.
John 4:24 “God is spirit.”
When Paul speaks of the resurrection,
1 Cor 15:42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
This spiritual body is more real not less. It is the physical body which is lacking reality because it is just a momentary arrangement of energy and particles according to mathematical laws having no regard for us whatsoever. It is no more real than a puff of air which soon disperses and is gone.
I do not disagree with anything you said about the origin of life. Of course, the beginning of life goes back to the big bang, but what I was trying to address is the belief that the origin of the universe, and the origin of life, and the origin of the first male and female humans, all started in the span of six days. I suspect that you would agree that particular belief is not a good starting point for achieving harmony between science and theology.
The answer to your question is found in the sentence you quote. I believe the gift of consciousness is bestowed in the womb. Our consciousness matures throughout our lives. It is as though God created the universe as a greenhouse for the cultivation of souls. When we die our consciousness reunites with the unlimited consciousness of God.
