My Trip to the Ark Encounter

[Mazrocon]

@Christy

I tend to think Jesus had short hair as well,

C’mon now. We all know that Jesus looks like a somewhat effeminate white dude with long hair, a beard, wearing a white robe with a blue sash. If you missed this in Sunday School, you can just google it. This is one of those things that is just so obvious, we shouldn’t even have to discuss it. You don’t get to go around changing the traditional ideas about what Jesus looked like to fit with your preconceived revisionist notions.

You’re right … my bad I thereby retract my statement as being too revisionist, and plead for your acceptance back into the fold. I hope we can still be friends, and we can put this sporadic heretical episode behind us.

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Woo kin, I am interested in what you see as internal inconsistencies amd self contradictions. Please give an example or two as that might make for fruitful discussion. Again, not between theistic evolutionist and your interpretation, but within theistic evolution and the interpretation used by theistic evolutionists themselves, without using the fallback position that your reading is not an interpretation.

[bren]

@Wookin_Panub

“Shouldn’t you as a non-expert also be divided on the question?”

Shouldn’t you?

Um, that’s sort of the point. I already said I wasn’t sure about genre or authorial intent. You have been listening, right? Nice effort at a redirect, but failed I’m afraid:slight_smile:. Please address the question instead of unsuccessfully trying to turn it back.

@Wookin_Panub

Well then, let me put it like this. It is basic hermeneutical principle. You NEVER use some obscure verse in order for it to be in opposition to another. The bible consist of easy verses to understand, difficult verses, and downright impossible verses. Genesis 1 is a plainly stated passage. You don’t muddy the waters by saying, we can’t really interpret Genesis 1, because there are other verses that are too difficult to interpret, my friend

Much as I appreciate your lesson on hermeneutics, your have badly lost the thread here. I didn’t say Genesis 1 was confusing or obscure, I said that the genre and the intent were unknown and are not clarified elsewhere in the Bible. Are they? Can you show me? Of all of the genres that existed back then, particularly cosmogony, none of them that we know of were intended to convey a straight factual, modernist account of material events. There are simply no examples of “straight history”, as you would understand it, from that time period. Yet you claim to have discovered a single example of a genre that only begins to develop a thousand years later. Of course, such a brilliant find should be supported by argument and proof.

Your argument? “It’s plainly stated”. Yes, I know. So is the parable of the sower. So is the immobility of Earth and the orbit of the sun. So is the account of the pillars of the Earth that hold up the firmament. So is the fascinating account about how genetics works in Gen 30:31-43. So is the discussion of the role of the firmament for holding back the upper waters in Genesis. So is the account of the tail of the dragon sweeping a third of the stars from the sky in Rev 12. All clear as day. And far be it for us to use a combination of outside information, genre determination and humility investigate any of these texts.

@Wookin_Panub

That’s the beauty of the bible. It was translated.

This response ignores my point so profoundly and so obstinately that there is little else to be said about it. The rest of the paragraph glosses over the large differences in context and, again, genre, between the various passages you bring up. Is it your point that I don’t consider these factors for other passages in the Bible as well? That would be incorrect, and I’m afraid you have been misled by a false assumption.

@Wookin_Panub

“based on a wider understanding and a wider interpretative framework”

of evolutionary science

Crude. Nope, why would I read Genesis in light of evolutionary science? Biology wasn’t even a rudimentary discipline back then, so it would be ridiculous to expect it to address or discuss it. It would be strange to expect it to be history before history was being written, strange to expect it to speak to science long before science existed, and extremely bizarre to expect it to answer to my own special 21st century concerns. You don’t even seem to be making the slightest effort to ask how an ancient Israelite would receive or understand such a writing or even what message it can carry to all time periods, regardless of scientific understanding or historical context. What does any of this have to do with evolution?! Wookin, please refrain from assumptions about my position; they are generally not panning out.

@Wookin_Panub

Please give me an exaple

You don’t need an example. In fact, I would love a counterexample of what scholarship you are not ignoring. You are ignoring nearly all of the well researched books and papers that are freely available about how to understand Genesis in it’s ancient context in favor of your personal understanding of your English translation of the text, based on a point of view cooked up thousands of years after it is written, apparently without an inkling that there is the slightest problem or room for doubt here. Which would be fine unless you then decided that you are personally called to confidently trumpet that total absence of careful investigation on the internet. And here we are…