Then there’s this approach:
That cartoon triggered the memory of a novella where someone got zapped back in time and landed in fourth century Oaxaca where due to his knowledge he became advisor to a king. For some reason he didn’t age, so he was revered enough that any recommendation he made to the king was followed. The “punch line” of the story was that his kingdom steadily grew and ended up conquering the Aztecs sixty years before the first Spanish set foot on the mainland, so when they did arrive they faced a Mexican Empire that had bolt-action rifles.
No oil reserves, though. 
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Hiya Vinnie. In Genesis, the first ten chapters and the first ten verses of chapter 11 are not fact, they are story,
Why so? Here are verses 1 and 3 in chapter 1 (my paraphrase) All at one go, God invented time, space, matter, and light.
Think that one over. Clearly God the Creator produced an entire universe. “In the beginning” says there was one - no before. Time itself started when God spoke the universe into being.
Here, then, is verse two (paraphrase) The only thing in the universe was vast water, and God’ spirit brooded over it.
Or in other words the prior pagan origin-of-the-world tale was good enough. So ask yourself why God would choose to unload a thousand scrolls of deep science to let the people know just how the universe came to be - 13.8 billion years, early on its size grew faster than light, stars, fusing elements, later generation stars using fused elements to form planets, abiogenesis, evolution, the unfolding life forms -
Or wouldn’t it serve the purpose to put a stamp on it that says “mine” in a way that was suitable to that time, with illiterate people in the bronze age. God took two chapters to explain everything up to the arrival of homo sapiens.
What about the Flood?
It was local, and soaked a large nearly-flat flood plain deep enough to make the lucky few people in boats realize that it was water horizon to horizon (covered those mountaintops)-
The pagans had a story to explain being just about washed off the face of the earth. Nobody in Mesopotamia in that era would take a creation narrative seriously if it didn’t have its own Flood story.
But that just nibbles around the edges. We covered the birth of the universe in verses 1 and 3 as of Day One. Now let’s look at Days Two, Three, and Four - they disagree completely with the Creation we live in today.
Oh, yeah? - Yeah.
Day Two lifts half the universe’s water above the firmament (vault of the sky.)
Day Three lifts the earth up from the depths of the waters and sets it at sea level.
Day For places the sun, moon, and stars within the vault of the sky.
So far so good?
Earth is a large ball with a thin crispy crust of continents surrounded by films of water we call seas.
Earth orbits the nearest star.
Or in other words Day Two and Day Three and Day Four d i d n o t h a p p e n.
Here is the meat of Genesis: it embodies and illustrates profound theological truths. It does that so simply that no one can misunderstand, and in a way that works for illiterate minds and (I love this) six-year-olds in Sunday School.
Long story short, Genesis is perfect for imparting subtle, profound truths about the Creator. The Holy Spirit should be forgiven for not using real facts.
Putting in the real facts would have hidden those teachings behind a great wall of science.
Modern science agrees with verses 1 and 3 from chapter 1: (paraphrase) “God invented time, space, matter, and light, all at one go.” IOW Genesis starts at the Big Bang.
Modern science disagrees completely with every other word up to and including the Tower of Babel.
Sin is the direct result of a mechanically perfect universe using evolution to spin up species Homo sapiens. Consider: everything alive today has ancestors going al the way back o the First Cell. For the past 3.8 (ish) billion years every single ancestor managed to survive and produce progeny. What does that imply? We have been naturally selected, all the way, to succeed at living and reproducing. Those two ideas (and more of course) are wired in. That is initial (thank you St.Roymond) sin.
It is not helpful to ridicule the literalist. That is in part why we have a separation of views between YEC’s and scientific evidence that applies to Genesis 1-11. The YEC’s are not the enemy but admittedly they do not accept any evidence from science unless it supports their view and in some cases that is a distortion.
We should focus on what the evidence indicates relative to Genesis 1-11 and there is plenty. Scientific evidence can explain events in Genesis 1-11, that requires a reinterpretation that deviates from tradition but still maintains the truth of Genesis 1-11 as the divinely inspired word of God. The people who wrote Genesis, while divinely inspired but they wrote based on what they knew and perhaps what they believed at the time. But the evidence from the last 150 years helps us see Genesis 1-11 in a less mythical-like way to some and more clearly regarding the events. We need to accept that evidence will show that certain events like the Flood, the Tower of Babel story, the lifespans of Genesis 5, the presence of giants provides clarification and supports for but with new evidence. There is more I would like to address in your points but it will have to await my new book Refections on Genesis: The Alignment of Scientific Evidence with Genesis 1-11
Literal iinterpretation or interpretation based on evidence unavailable to the original writers, we can all end up in the same central truth and that is Adam brought sin into the world and Christ provided forgiveness.
I have no problem rejecting the literalist interpretation when it is shown that it is not in agreement with evidence from physics, archaeology, geology and paleontology findings. The evidence leads to an alternative interpretation and does not alter the belief that God created everything, developed man, created Adam, Adam sinned and died to eternal life, and Jesus brought eternal life to us all by the frogivong of sin.
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That’s not exactly it. TE’s prefer a metaphorical interpretation because a literal interpretation is refuted by mountains of observable facts.
To use a different example, Cardinal Bellarmine interpreted the Bible literally when it said that the Earth didn’t move. This is why he was against Galileo’s Heliocentric model which had the Earth spinning about its axis and moving about the Sun. However, even Cardinal Bellarmine stated that his views on the matter would need to change if someone was able to demonstrate that Heliocentrism was true.
“But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without traveling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our hold faith by contradicting the Scriptures….
. . .
Third, I say that, if there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true.”
–Cardinal Bellarmine, Letter to Father Foscarini, 1615
That’s where we are with common ancestry, evolution, and the ancient age of the Universe/Earth. We are in the same place as we are with Heliocentrism. When something has been demonstrated to be true, then understanding of scripture needs to shift with it.
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No we cannot, For Adam to be the Original sinner Adam must have been real along with the Garden and all that went with it. The only reason to hang on to that sort of reality is to insist on Original sin or the fallen nature of man. Reality denies this. Good is not restricted to Christians who have been forgiven. To state that humanity is innately evil is just plain wrong. We sin because we choose to not because Adam or anyone else forces us to.
Imposing a scriptural view on behaviour is as wrong as imposing a scriptural view on science.
Richard
Original sin never made sense to me, even when I was a Christian. We all sin, so we all need forgiveness for the sins we have committed. It’s not as if we live a sin-free life so that the only sin we need forgiveness for are the sins we were born with. Jesus said, “Let those without sin cast the first stone,” and he didn’t get any takers.
What Genesis reads like to me is an allegory that attempts to explain why we act disobediently. It’s a coming of age story where we exit the innocence of youth and move on to our stubborn, selfish adult state. Along the way we learn the difference between good and evil, and yet still choose the wrong behavior on occasion. Genesis seems to deal with this aspect of human behavior through a story involving human archetypes that were probably mixed with other stories that were circulating at the time.
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The point is not whether we sin but why. Original Sin would suggest that it is part of our makeup but that introduces the diminished responsibility syndrome. “I can’t help it!” We all have a choice. If we sin it is because we choose to. The fact that sin is almost inevitable is not because it is inbred it is because there is so much opportunity within a lifetime so that the chances of never succumbing are virtually nil.
Some people seem to think it diminishes Christ’s salvation if sin is not endemic, but that is just not true. The sin is still there to be forgiven whether it is voluntary or mandatory.
Richard
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It occurs to me that the Garden story has a polemical purpose: every ancient story about where humans came from tended to have them made as slaves for deity, but in Genesis 2 this isn’t the case; the man is put in a specially-prepared location where God also walks and is thus more a companion than a servant.
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None of those accurately describes Original Sin or fallenness. Original Sin and fallenness impute an inclination towards sin and a guarantee of sinning at some point, not a requirement of sinning at any given time. And humans are certainly not innately good, so it would seem entirely accurate to say that we are innately evil, but are not as evil as we could be, and that God acts through all humans, though not in necessarily equal measure.
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Non sequitor.
Humans are inately neutral morally. Some people would appear to be brn evil and some with more angelic tendencies but that is just diversity. If you can accept that some people are born homosexual or even transgendered then it is not an impossible stretch to acept the same diversity in morality.
Richard
Not really – we are born into the realm of death, born already dying, and the realm of death always leads to sin. Neutral morally would mean there’s a question of whether humans will sin or not, but that’s a false question; the only question is when we will sin and how.
One is biology, the other is not.
In fact you just contradicted yourself: if we are born morally neutral, then no one is born more evil than any other.
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Where does the Book of Genesis say, “THE EARTH IS FLAT”
Where does the Bible show to have a disrespect for women?
Yes, you are write, Because Adam fell, he rejected God and gave the earth to the devil.
Since the devil has no life giving and restorative powere, that left man receiving only part of what God had to give to man.
And yes, man did come from the first ever male and female, Adam and Eve.
You are either a believer in God or you aren’t. If you reject what God says, you reject God himself.
Thanks for the info. I try to see things through the evidence available and scripture by alighning them with a explanation that respects both.
The way I see it is that Genesis 1-2:1-4 describes creation and the origin of man in agreement with the abundant anthropopligical, paleontological and archeological evidence available. The Homo sapien that developoed over time was made in God’s image to rule the earth.
Evidence further shows that man committed horrendous evil acts during that time. That seems man was innately attracted to evil. I argue that it was not counted as sin to them (Pre-Adam people) because they had no law. (Romans 5:13)
These humans had invented their gods but not the God of the universe and authot of the Law because God had not yet revealed himself until Adam. So their evil was just that, evil, and not sin because sin is defined as an evil act against a divine authority.
But remember God before creation had a plan to make man holy and blameless through Jesus Christ our Lord (Ephesins 1: 4-10). This was part of that plan. This was a plan made before God had created an earth, mankind, evil, sin and forgiveness but all obviously was anticipated.
Genesis 2 describes an awareness of God in the world through the creation of Adam and Eve by God in a sinless state and placement of them in the idyllic Garden of Eden. They had no sin but eventually disobeyed God which is an evil act thus committing a sin against God. Sin had entered the world through Adam. It would remain that way until Jesus Christ who takes away the sins of the world.
It also demonstrated the power of evil to tempt a sinless man, who chose to yield and thus have the knowledge of good and evil like God (Genesis 3:23) and thus have sinned.
As you say, the choice is ours to make
No, I said the inate or perhaps better the base would be neutral. There will be variations due to Nature/nurthure as in all things. I refuse to belive that God created anything other than neutral, or that any human could corrupt God’s perfect creation.
There is no sceintific proof either way what causes our basic morality… Certainly Scripture cannot impose such a condemnation.
Reality trumps scripture every time
That asumes God dictated Scripture. He almost certainly did not.
That is genrtically impossible.
It is not sated but it is implied by the makeup described. The earth is described as having a dome over it. I doubt that would be a globe…
Aw come on! Read what Paul says about women in church! Judaism is totally male orientated. And Scriptrue ignores women unless they have a central role. Eg Jesus fed 5000 men…
Richard
Much of what Paul says about women in church is radically feminist, for example admonishing all women to wear a veil. In that context, a woman wearing a veil was a woman of status, one of the upper or upper middle part of society. Telling women to wear a veil was a way of saying all Christian women count as upper crust.
As for the thing about hair and covering their heads, that instruction rests on women having such glory as to tempt angels.
Besides those, what Paul wrote has to be assessed by what he did, which included acknowledging at least one woman as an apostle and appointing women heads of churches.
Though if you’re thinking of I Corinthians 14, the RSV (following the KJV) catches the tone of verse 36 correctly:
What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?
Paul is countering what seems to be a quote from someone in Corinth:
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church
This rests on Jewish law, for which Paul gave no approval elsewhere. He is actually contrasting them with his point about “decency and order”.
Yes – which tells us that this is not something that came from Paul but is something he is denying has any place in the churches. His final point is to remind them of the Gospel, in cintrast to Jewish law.
Who decided that the literal translation and interpretation of Genesis is the only valid understanding? Word’s and their meaning are man-made as depicted by Adam naming the animals. The literal understanding only applies if God doesn’t exist since it puts human limitations on Genesis. The knowledge that we obtain from and about the creation allows us to develop an epistemic understanding of the universe. There should be a comparable epistemic understanding of Genesis. “In the beginning God created space and matter, and the matter was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was vibrating over the fluid matter.” (Genesis 1:1-2, Epistemic translation)
People who don’t want to have to do the hard work of studying the text to figure out what the original writer(s) meant.
Or maybe people who are so arrogant they think that God had everything in the scriptures written in their terms rather than for the people back when things were written.
Or people who can’t grasp that ancient people had different worldviews that we do today.
Or . . . .
I’m going to flat say that translation sucks – it is pushing modern concepts into ancient writing and ending up with something internally contradictory.
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