First of all Jesus beign false is saying like God can make mistakes which basically we “humanize” God completely. Second how could Jesus didnt know things like the Father did?(If anyone can explain i will be greatfull) And third i think the genesis narrative is an interesting book that is a part of the Jewish culture. It has a symbolic meaning which we cannot fully understand. Thus it might not be “history” (modt certainly is not) . So Jesus refering to that is him refering to that specific symbolism.
I am a Unitarian. We are inclined to think the Trinity is an over-statement… that even Paul would not have expected!
Well i speak for trinitarians here. Sorry for not beign specific
There were at least some things Jesus didn’t know as I noted above.
But in general, I wouldn’t say that Augustine or Aquinas (or other church fathers) were wrong for describing Creation in a geocentric way. They encountered God and communicated truths about God through their understanding of his creation. Let’s say they were inspired at some points, does that mean their statements about cosmology are authoritative, or can we acknowledge that the main point is the revelation of the creator. This is virtually what we see in the old testament with a description of creation being well very ancient. It doesn’t describe modern science and many Christians are fine with that being the case while still speaking authoritatively on who God is.
1 Like
I mean it wasnt its purpose to teach science at least how i see it. Secondly im stilk curious about the points youve made before about Jesus not knowing things. I mean Jesus has a relationship with the Father but the Father is “hiding things”?.
1 Like
All I meant at the very least was this:
Context is everything and not just the story but the reading of the story. not everyone wrote or read back then and so the oral traditions were combined into a narrative so they could be remembered easily.
humans have been around a million plus years but it was only when climate change and fighting among the various tribes began forcing what would become agriculture - which required knowledge of plant growth and other factors not so necessary during tribal hunter gather life styles. So some tribes settled down - it takes a growing season of work and preparation to grow a field of crops - and developed the very different way of looking at the world…Hence Adam and Eve are an oral tradition and the book? the book of knowledge? and so much changed when they were (among) the other tribes doing the same thing.
Since the hebrew - they were not jews yet - were one of those tribes who after agriculture started travel and raised their newly domesticated animals between the new cities that could grow BECAUSE agriculture enabled obtaining one’s BMR by doing other services inside one’s own community/city.
The hebrew like the gypsy and celts were those who traveled between the new Adam and Eve cities and keep information flowing as well as enabled the trade in tin and copper that would bring the bronze age. And eventually the cities/states became interlocked and battled for land and then a climate change helped bring down the bronze age in a cyclical type of self actualizing process that had critical places -----like food production — which became taken for granted just as we take our food production and water issues today.
so Adam and Eve are good metaphorical creations which tell a sort of basic story of the early days when agriculture first began.
And the timing is close as humans were living in HG tribes and scattered all over when Agriculture was invented and ENABLED humans to live in large city/states. This happened 6 to 10 thousands years ago…along with the ability to grow food for domesticated animals.
I got a little lost throughout your post. But looking back would you be more inclined to go with option 2 or option 3 then in the original post?
I go to Philippians 2:5-8 for this question:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
I think Jesus gave up some of his deity knowledge and power when He emptied Himself. You’ll notice that the signs He performs occur after He is baptized and the Holy Spirit comes upon Him.
5 Likes
When I look up what God is called it is Elohim in Gen. 1 but Yahweh Elohim in Genesis 2. It isn’t just Yahweh alone.
Yeah it is YHWH 'Elohim in Genesis 2 compared to just 'Elohim in Genesis 1. What do you think it means @gbob?
We had a few answers as to why the difference so far.
@jpm proposed:
@RichardG proposed:
@Boscopup didn’t quite buy that saying:
And finally @Christy chimed in:
1 Like
I serm to be in the minority on the Documentary Hypothesis thing. 
I’ve just done enough reading on the utter lack of evidence and the minimalist views of those espousing it, that I can’t at all go along with it.
Curious if it would affect your view on the reliability of Scripture or not. I am not sure what to think yet.
I think there is a different between multiple authors and the specific documentary hypothesis. Do you agree?
Yes, it would and did. It was what sent me into atheism for a time. The picture it painted for me was that Judaism was a made up religion.
I suppose so, but the only “multiple authors” idea relating to Genesis 1-11 I’ve heard of is the Documentary Hypothesis. I can accept that Moses may have written using other sources (like toledot tablets), and obviously someone else wrote about Moses’s death. If you have other theories to share, I’m open to learning about them.
1 Like
I initially thought that was the case, but Moses didn’t write the portion that says he was buried–and after all, I wonder why not have someone report (like the gospel writers) what they saw and heard from multiple witnesses? I’m not sure. Lamoureux @DOL is a fervent Christian, a scientist with a doctorate in theology, and does subscribe to a degree of this too. I can respect the concern and the thought that this could lead to atheism; and it was one of my big worries, too, till I listened to Lamoureux’s course on Coursera. I’m interested to hear what @Christy and others say.
Having said that, I don’t want to put you through that stress again. I think every one of us has struggled with faith–mine has been for both having lost my salvation and, at times, with God’s existence–but I appreciate your thoughts.
1 Like
I think that anyone arguing for the original documentary hypothesis would be 50 years out of date, as wikipedia has a nice summary:
A version of the documentary hypothesis, frequently identified with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen, was almost universally accepted for most of the 20th century, but the consensus has now collapsed.[7] This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters, Hans Heinrich Schmid, and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s.[8] These “revisionist” authors argued that J was to be dated no earlier than the time of the Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE),[9] and rejected the existence of a substantial E source.[10] They also called into question the nature and extent of the three other sources. Van Seters, Schmid, and Rendtorff shared many of the same criticisms of the documentary hypothesis, but were not in complete agreement about what paradigm ought to replace it.[8]
As a result, there has been a revival of interest in fragmentary and supplementary approaches, frequently in combination with each other and with a documentary model, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another.[11] Modern scholars generally see the completed Torah as a product of the time of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), although some would place its production in the Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE), after the conquests of Alexander the Great.[12]
This references the Supplementary Hypothesis. I am not aware of too many who argue for Mosiac authorship beyond certain sections of Evangelical Christianity.
As I understand it, and I am by no means an expert, most OT scholars have moved away from the Documentary Hypothesis in its strong form that claims these neat divisions between four authors and they dispute the evidence for a number of the main claims. I have read up on it at various times, but the details have not stuck.
I think most OT scholars agree that “authorship” worked much differently in an oral society like the Hebrews and had more to do with the authority behind a text than it had to do with our modern conception of someone creating an original composition that goes from their mind to paper/parchment/papyrus. (A good read from a fairly conservative perspective is Walton and Sandy’s Lost World of Scripture) So, if you have an idea that Moses sat down at a desk and penned Genesis, you have the wrong idea, even if he was legitimately considered the “author” of of it in the ancient world. It is pretty clear that the texts that eventually became Scripture were compiled from various oral sources and other more ancient documents lost to us and they went through redactions and edits and rearrangements before they got to the form that was eventually preserved by scribes.
4 Likes
Thank you! That makes more sense than 4 different authors.