The two sources of information about the creation that the topic is discussing are Genesis and God’s Creation. They are commonly referred to as the ‘two books’ from God. God is typically thought to be omniscient. There is no omniscience to Genesis if our understanding is limited to the knowledge of the human writer and the literal translation of man-made words. Genesis and God’s creation can each be interpreted according to their own nature, but that would mean that they are not related. Genesis would be a fictional story from the human imagination. The ‘truth’ of Genesis would rest entirely on belief in the face of information to the contrary from God’s creation. Most people are disturbed by contradictory information and they try to resolve the problem as is the focus of this topic.
There is omniscience in the gospels?
Vinnie
And I don’t see that as a problem.
Genesis would be a inspired story that speaks to us without having to be “true” in our modern understanding.
The “truth” of Genesis comes from our acceptance of the authority of the person who recorded the story and it’s position in our tradition.
It’s only contradictory if you try to read Genesis as a modern newspaper, which it isn’t, and therein lies the problem.
And, BTW, the omniscience of God is shown is shown in how scriptures have stood the test of time, not that they contain secret hidden knowledge.
I am simply expressing the thoughts of a rational mind. The dilemma has nothing to do with a ‘scientific POV’. The information in Genesis, that is called ‘God’s Word’, is where the connection between God and the creation comes from. Science makes no such claim. I have actually resolved the dilemma in my own mind. But the topic of this conversation indicates that people have a variety of thoughts on the issue of the veracity of the stories in Genesis. There will never be a common consensus in the mind of different individuals. People will always identify with ideas and institutions that they find attractive and compatible with their aptitude and desires.
Aye, it’s an emotional issue. If only Love demonstrated Themselves in either or both!
Omniscience is an assigned attribute of God. A reasonable application of that idea would be that the knowledge God grants to us would be useful for understanding God’s Word. The awakening of knowledge in the human mind is the story of the Garden of Eden. It is portrayed as the awareness of a distinction between good and evil that came with the decision by Adam to disobey God’s rules for tending the Garden. Omniscience is a quality of God, not the gospels per se.
Ah – here’s the problem: there is no “evidence to the contrary from God’s creation” if you read Genesis according to its own nature, only if you demand that God had to meet modern expectations in ancient literature.
The first step is to get people to understand that Genesis is not a set of newspaper reports, that none of it is history in the modern sense of the term.
The Great Flood of Noah is a good example of contradictory information.
Whether regional or global, it is clear that Cain and his descendants were
wiped out. BUT….
the Bible strongly suggests the Kenites are descendants of Cain, indicated by the similar Hebrew words Qayin (Cain) and Qenites (Kenites), linking them as “sons of Cain,” and associating them with metalworking skills (like Cain’s descendants) and a nomadic life, with some traditions seeing them as proto-Scribes or smiths, though their survival after the Flood poses theological
impossibilities!
I agree with you. You are actually saying the same thing from a different perspective. The problem is that it is impossible for someone to read Genesis in its own nature from a literal translation. Translation is interpretation. The topic of conversation here is about how to correlate the literal translation of the Genesis stories with the knowledge that God has granted us by studying the creation. How you get people to understand that reading a literal translation of Genesis is not like reading a modern novel is a different topic.
Reading is also interpretation.
If you want to be pedantic anything that is processed by the brain is interpretation.
Richard
The same is true of any literature, even when there is no translation involved – genre and context are critical.
Or, rather, a modern newspaper report. Reading Genesis like a novel would actually enhance most people’s ability to understand.
On a different level. But then seeing is interpretation, for that matter!
I agree that reading Genesis as a novel could help the reader understand what it is saying. The reader would realize that there are fictional aspects to the stories that are used to help understand the main objective. The understanding would also be aided by knowledge of God’s creation. A good novel starts by introducing the reader to the main characters. In the case of Genesis, the main characters are God and humans. It starts by introducing the reader to God using the creation. The problem is that most people think that it is introducing the reader to the creation using God. People think that it is telling the reader how to see the creation when God is the only observer in the opening chapter. The difference between how God saw the process and our knowledge of the creation should inform the reader about God. That God has authority and is not bound by the dimensions of space and time. The Garden story introduces the reader to humans. In particular, it portrays human nature with respect to God’s authority. The Garden is historically fictional but the ability to imagine it provides the reader with a useful setting for understanding human nature. Most people get stuck in the weeds of the details.
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