Question about Genesis

[2KnowHim]

So now we have to wander off into mysticism to grasp Genesis 1 - 3? Then why is it written in language which is comprehensible to a schoolboy?

Mysticism?....Is that what you call someone who has a spiritual mind, or someone who has received The Revelation of Jesus Christ?

God is Spirit, His Word is Spirit, we are to be born of The Spirit, we are to worship in Spirit....etc...

1Co 2:11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
1Co 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
1Co 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1Co 2:15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
1Co 2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Rom 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

 

[Hoghead1]

Why would God inspire a writer to fib about how God created man?
Why would God inspire Paul to tell us sin and death entered because of one man...Adam...if it didn't happen that way?

Will you also argue that the resurrection of Jesus was also symbolic and imaginative presentations of truth?

God maybe did not inspire a writer to fib. The Bible may be divinely inspired, but it still carries strong human fingerprints and, at times, may reflect more the unchecked prejudices of the authors.

 

[-57]

God maybe did not inspire a writer to fib. The Bible may be divinely inspired, but it still carries strong human fingerprints and, at times, may reflect more the unchecked prejudices of the authors.

You didn't really answer my question. Of course I do expect to see Pauls, Moses's or even Davids personality show through Gods word.....but I don't think the inspired Word of God was written with unchecked prejudices. Then again maybe you don't think the bible was inspired.

 

[patrick jane]

Homosexuality is a sin and goes against God's Word - these things happen to gays:

Romans 1:22-23 KJV - Romans 1:24 KJV - Romans 1:25 KJV - Romans 1:26 KJV -


Romans 1:27 KJV - Romans 1:28 KJV - Romans 1:29 KJV - Romans 1:30 KJV -



Romans 1:31 KJV - Romans 1:32 KJV -

 

[Hoghead1]

I think the Bible was, in part, inspired. The Bible is the product of a God-human interaction. However, I do not think the Bible is inerrant. I think there are prejudices of the writers clearly showing through in that key parts of the Bible are racist and sexist. In the OT, for example, you can sell your daughter into slavery. Paul tells the women to shut up in church, etc. I also think it racist, as the Jews are often seen as the apple of God's eye, the chosen ones. Anyone standing in their way is very cruelly death with by YHWH, who is really a warrior God, not a God of love. The biblical cosmology, with its flat earth, etc., is way, way off from the truth. There are loads of books included or excluded from the Bible by the arbitrary authority of the fathers, who made sure whatever is Scripture backs their position. I had an OT professor who use to start the semester by walking in and throwing the Bible in the wastebasket. "The Bible," he said, "is the word of man. The Word of God somehow breaks through the work of man."

 

[BobRyan]

I think the Bible was, in part, inspired

"ALL scripture is given by inspiration from God AND is to be used for doctrine" 2Tim 3:16

Maybe that is the part of the bible you think is not inspired.

 

[BobRyan]

Hi, Although I have christian background, I have some questions about Genesis, partly because others raise these questions and objections at times too. If its possible to answer them I like some answers. In all honesty I suppress some of my questions at times.

What is Genesis the first three chapters - I am inclined to call it mythopoetic (not in the sense of never having happened, or being untrue) but in its language, its not scientific. For myself I no longer demand it should be, and this maybe came gradually.

But others still raise some questions. For instance, the creation of plant life before the creation of the sun. If its not chronological in sequence how should it be understood. Whats back of this requirement that Genesis read as a scientific textbook?

Those who place no faith in the Bible are free to call it what they want.

But as for what the text says - it is not written as myth, or as allegory or as fairyland it is written as a historical account. Whether one "believes" the account is another question.

Hebrew scholars of standing have always regarded this to be the case. Thus, Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

 

[2KnowHim]

But as for what the text says - it is not written as myth, or as allegory or as fairyland it is written as a historical account. Whether one "believes" the account is another question.

Historical accounts of something even in Scripture..cannot give Life.
The Letter kills, but the Spirit gives Life.
The Word is Spirit, it is NOT a History Lesson..

 

[Hoghead1]

Bob, my view is that every moment of experience is inspired by God. However, we have freedom and don't always carry out God's aims. So, yes, I consider the Bible inspired but certainly not inerrant. God did not write the Bible and then drop it down on our heads, on a sliver platter. The Bible has a considerable human fingerprint dimension. Indeed, what is taken as Scripture and what not was often dictated by the arbitrary judgments of the church fathers who often disagreed as to just what books should be in the Bible. There is no way you can understand the Bible and not allow for some arbitrary decisions on the parts of its composers to enter the equation.

 

[BobRyan]

Historical accounts of something even in Scripture..cannot give Life.
The Letter kills, but the Spirit gives Life.
The Word is Spirit, it is NOT a History Lesson..

so then in your view - no actual historic "virgin birth"?
nor "bodily resurrection of Christ"?
nor Christ bodily ascended into heaven,?
nor pentecost...?
no actual historic miracle in the Bible actual "happened in history"?

rather it is simply "spiritual emphasis" on an "idea" -- not an actual historic -- a "fact of History"??

Or are you saying "They may or may not have happened in actual history - but that is not the point"??

Ok fine --

But for the rest of us - it is actual history.

 

[BobRyan]

Bob, my view is that every moment of experience is inspired by God. However, we have freedom and don't always carry out God's aims. So, yes, I consider the Bible inspired but certainly not inerrant. God did not write the Bible and then drop it down on our heads, on a sliver platter.

"ALL scripture inspired by God and to be used for doctrine, correction, instruction, reproof" 2 Tim 3:16

2 Peter 1
"20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."

The Bible has a considerable human fingerprint dimension. Indeed, what is taken as Scripture and what not was often dictated by the arbitrary judgments of the church fathers who often disagreed as to just what books should be in the Bible. There is no way you can understand the Bible and not allow for some arbitrary decisions on the parts of its composers to enter the equation.

Heb 3
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today if you hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
9 Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me,
And saw My works for forty years.
10 “Therefore I was angry with this generation,
And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,
And they did not know My ways’;
11 As I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest.’”

 

[-57]

I think the Bible was, in part, inspired. The Bible is the product of a God-human interaction. However, I do not think the Bible is inerrant. I think there are prejudices of the writers clearly showing through in that key parts of the Bible are racist and sexist. In the OT, for example, you can sell your daughter into slavery. Paul tells the women to shut up in church, etc. I also think it racist, as the Jews are often seen as the apple of God's eye, the chosen ones. Anyone standing in their way is very cruelly death with by YHWH, who is really a warrior God, not a God of love. The biblical cosmology, with its flat earth, etc., is way, way off from the truth. There are loads of books included or excluded from the Bible by the arbitrary authority of the fathers, who made sure whatever is Scripture backs their position. I had an OT professor who use to start the semester by walking in and throwing the Bible in the wastebasket. "The Bible," he said, "is the word of man. The Word of God somehow breaks through the work of man."

Your post sounds like you read a book written by a non christian in an attempt to tear down the Bible.
For example you posted "Paul tells the women to shut up in church," Do you know why Paul wrote that? Do you honestly believe Paul was a sexist?