Somebody has to understand the culture, literature, and languages of the Bible in order to produce the tools in Olive Tree, right?
I can assure you that not a single Bible translator since Jerome has thought that a reliable translation is possible without understanding the cultural, literary, and linguistic backgrounds of the Bible. If you are going straight to the interlinear without working to understand the backgrounds, you are depriving yourself of many riches, in my opinion.
Best,
Chris
Sorry but I’m not a Christian and don’t even know much scripture let alone much about theology. From my POV your (and my brother’s) stance just seems naive and insufficient for making sense of the world we live in. But I do believe he and you may find fulfillment religiously even if it doesn’t appeal to me.
“if we assume that Leviathan is a reference to a dinosaur,”
There is the question. Why would we assume that, since there is no evidence dinosaurs lived at that time or were known to the writers of that day?
We should not read our present science into the literary stream of something written thousands of years ago. Why are some who reject mainstream science so eager to read science into ancient pre-scientific texts?
…is also considered a creation Psalm.
That fits very nicely with what we know about the early earth… and a more literal reading of Genesis 1. It does not have to be the Noahic flood.
That would imply that animal death is not a result of evil, and especially since the psalmist is praising God for it. (And if I recall correctly, the Hebrew word for lion is derived from ‘tearer’, presumably what Adam named it, before the fall, in a more literal reading of Genesis 1.)
“Never again will they cover the earth” – I take that to be the hint in the text that the passage is referencing the flood.
That’s because you don’t understand the scientific method, period. The scientific method does not discern truths of the deep past by speculating. It discerns truths of the deep past by measuring things.
Here’s what you do in particular.
The average will give an estimate for the age of the rock sample that you are calculating. The standard error of the mean will give an indication of how far the end result could realistically be from the true value.
And no, you can’t just hand-wave this away as making assumptions, for the simple reason that the standard error of the mean is a test of assumptions, and tests of assumptions are not assumptions themselves. If the end result comes from a number of different techniques whose assumptions are all different, yet the standard error of the mean is only a tiny fraction of the average, then that will be a strong indication that the assumptions concerned were, in fact, correct.
This is simply how measurement works in every area of science. It works exactly the same whether you are dealing with the present or the deep past, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with “naturalism” or “secularism” or “materialism.”
Of course you do, as did I when I was a YEC. But Noah’s flood was not global… and that is another discussion.
The story is absurd if it were not global. Why build an ark? Why not just migrate? Why save the animals, etc.
I tend to be more of a concordist than many here, and believe that Noah’s flood was a massive regional flood, as opposed to something figurative. The animals on the ark did not represent all of the animals in the world – they were representative of a more local sort of wildlife and what was required to reinstitute animal husbandry.
I’ll definitely watch it. My fiancée is Chinese and will know a lot more about their mythologies. The only flood story from China that I know about takes place in the first “mythological dynasty” where a man so angry cried so many boiling tears it killed everything on earth.
The flood was catastrophic and extensive enough that there may not have been time for a nomadic family to evacuate, and Noah was also a prophet to the regional peoples. And isn’t the ark a powerful metaphor for grace and redemption?
That’s similar to my belief. I think a mythology was written around a real flood where a small villager survived a flood and saved his farm animals.
Part of that is because in the New Testament we see paul using the term “ whole world” to mean his known world of the Roman Empire. Likewise. Noah’s whole world would have been Mesopotamia.
Hi Van_Dreams,
You’ve been asking and answering a lot. Please do not feel the need to rush to answer this post. If you could take a note to give it some thought and then respond, I would be grateful. 
I offer you these verses from the NASB to consider.
“Greet one another with a holy kiss.” - II Corinthians 13:12
“the devil took Him along to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” - Matthew 4:8
"And if your eye is causing you to sin, throw it away; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be thrown into hell - Mark 9:47
““If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” - Luke 14:26
“He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.” - Psalm 104:5
" the world is firmly established; it will not be moved." - Psalm 93:1b
“‘The tree grew large and became strong
And its height reached to the sky,
And it was visible to the end of the whole earth.” - Daniel 4:11
“I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth” - Revelation 7:1
Yours,
Chris Falter
Like I said, I tend to be more of a concordist and would say it was more than a mythology.
Even more amazing is that pre-dynastic Chinese civilization existed for a year underwater without any discomfort.
Then my comment concerning Behemoth, not the sea creature Leviathan, stands…
Sorry, no T-Rex with people in the Bible, just creation museum “dinorama’s”
Read the Psalm in its entirety. These verses carry on…
10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
The most sound exegesis of Psalm 104 is that it is referencing not the flood, but the third day of creation with the application being of providence. Even if it were taken as the flood, the theme concerns water, not speeded up radioactive decay, hydroplaning tectonic plates or continental uplift. All of that is extra-Biblical invented theology.
I personally wonder if Noah’s Flood could have been the local effects of a much wider cataclysm that affected different parts of the world in different ways. I’ve found the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis a particularly intriguing possible candidate here.
Well I say mythology because if taken purely literal then everything around was flooded, including their high test mountains and remained under water for potentially up to a year. Even with just local farmers animals, the thousands and thousands of pounds of food thst would have had to been kept to feed livestock and so on would have been impossible for a handful of people to handle.
So instead I think a bad flood hit a small area, and that man and his family survived in a boat with some farm animals
For a few weeks before landing on some area of a mountain. So to me it’s a real story about real people dealing with a flood that overtime was filled with so much hyperbolic language it became a myth.
I certainly don’t have strenuous objections to that, especially considering how little I know about it. 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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