Science is great, but... How about we discuss some scripture?!

[laptoppop]

Well, the first thing to point out was that Paul didn't know any more of how the universe was created than the original writers of Genesis. In his mind, there was no need to accept the scripture any other way than simply by what it read.

This is often a key differential between TEs and YECs.

The prophets and writers of the Scripture (and I include Paul, just like Peter does) did not write according to their own understanding. The primary role of a prophet was to deliver the messages of God. However, so that people would know for sure that it was NOT just the man speaking, the prophet often included future prophecy. Sometimes it came about virtually immediately, as a confirmation of the word spoken. Sometimes, it came about a long long time later, such as Jesus being born in Bethlemen of a virgin of the line of David.

The error is to limit the authors to their own understanding. Yes, God used each author uniquely -- but what was written is God's message, not theirs.

II Pet. 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost.

 

[Assyrian]

Again it comes up. Genesis is prophetic. It is God talking to us about the creation of the universe, about his creation of man and our turning from him. It is God speaking to us through people who weren't there.

And like prophecy about the future, setting timetables of how it happens is usually contradicted by the actual events. By 1850 we knew that Christ was not going to come back in 1844 and that the earth was not created in 4004 BC.

And as I have pointed out before, modern YEC grew out of a movement who refused to admit they were wrong about their 1844 timetable, the Seventh Day Adventists.

Though YEC is most popular with the fans of the Left Behind series and Pre Trib Rap, most Christian now realise it is a bad idea to setting timetables about Christ's return. They should apply the same hard earned wisdom to prophecies about the creation.

 

[shernren]

Indeed prophets spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. The Bible itself says that prophets spoke. The Holy Spirit only moved - it didn't speak for the prophets, it moved the prophets to speak. And when the prophets spoke, they spoke in their own tongue, in their own concepts, to their own people. That makes perfect sense with the rest of Scripture. The entire reason why people find it so hard to make cosmic TV guides out of the prophecies is because there is hardly a signpost to be found. The prophecies don't so much as whisper about democracy, or science and technology, or globalization, or human rights, or entertainment, even though those are fundamental concepts of our times. Ever wondered why? After all, prophecies about the future should actually contain concepts from the future, shouldn't they?

But perhaps, as the Bible itself declares, it was the prophets who spoke and the Holy Spirit who moved - not the other way around where the prophets are just large and messy pens for the Holy Spirit.

 

[Xaero]

The Bible itself says that prophets spoke.

Hos 12:10 “And I have spoken to the prophets, and have increased visions. And through the prophets I gave parables.”


It wasn't the prophet who is a parable, what they spoke are parables! So much to the YEC claim that when taking Genesis allegorical, why not taking Jesus allegorical?
What Jesus spoke were parables - he himself isn't a parable.

The other way round is: when taking Gen1 literal, why not taking everything literal? Why not thinking that the even the blacksmith and the waster (Isa 54:16) were created (bara!) ex nihilo?
Or were the blacksmith simply born by a woman and trained his skills to become a blacksmith, IOW the blacksmith was created through natural processes?

 

[Scotishfury09]

Eh? The only thing you showed was that their probability calculation was inaccurate (and I totally agree). I'm sure since you read the whole article you noticed that the majority of it was discussing the cultures around the ancient near east and how similar those cultures' treatment of geneologies is to the Biblical accounts.

I didn't see anything in your posts to suggest that their math was somehow unbiblical (what does that even mean? Which operations in particular do you find unbiblical, addition, multiplication?)

Well, yes, the whole probability thing is a little off (ok, a lot off).

It talks about the first patriarchs having only the numbers 0, 2, 5, 7 and 9. They only talk about these 5 numbers in their probability. Why is it so important that they are in the first 10 but then not in the last 10? There's no explanation for this.

12 was a very sacred number yet they don't use it once in the calculations. I see where it says 5 + 7 = 12 and they do show that in 3 of the calculations, but in Lamech and Methuselah they don't show this. They don't use 5 and 7. 12 can be broken down into 6 and 2, but then why did they use 40 so much? Why did they use 15 in Abraham's? Why did they use the number 8 three times!? That was where I think it's unbiblical. 8? No matter how you slice it, 8 is not sacred to any of the cultures nor biblical.

Nahor looks like he was an anomaly to them. His first two calculations they had to subtract a year by calling it 6*2 mos (again, not 12). Then at his death age they use 8.

Why didn't any numbers end in 6? It seems to be used a whole lot in the calculations (Adam, Enosh, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, and Nahor [12 out of the 20]). Why isn't it used as the last digit?

I see a lot of liberties taken with this chart. When you add, subtract, multiply and sometimes use a combination you can get a lot of different numbers. Especially when you use 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and even 8 to get there.

I did read the rest of the article, but it's hard to take it as credible when they thing they are trying to prove seems to be fudged to make it look like it fits.

I see the transition throughout the Torah. You're looking for a hard switch from myth to historical when the cultural norm in the entire region changed slowly. The first thing you need to do is stop looking at the old testement from a 21st century point of view. Their genres and standards were very different from those we have today.

Then please explain more, or give an article. I'm not poking and prodding at you, I honestly would like to know more about it.

 

[Deamiter]

Then please explain more, or give an article. I'm not poking and prodding at you, I honestly would like to know more about it.

You're quite justified in asking for further sources, I just don't have time at the moment (see my earlier posts). I do find it interesting that you focused on the numbers in the articles picking apart the analysis whereas I focused on the many points that were cultural and not mathematical. The article actually answered your question about why the first ten should be different than the others in that the Hebrew number system seems to have shifted from the Assyrian sexigesimal system to the Egyptian decimal system for pretty obvious reasons. Further, by the time of David, it seems that chronology was of more importance in the Hebrew culture and the shift from sacred numbers easily explains the shift from inflated ages to more reasonable ages over the hundreds of years spanned by the events in Genesis.

A major question I've never seen even partially addressed is how one would explain the ages in the Assyrian Kings list if cultures in the ancient near east valued chronology over sacred numbers. There is no mention in ANY period document that other cultures' inflated ages were considered deceptive. Yet the Assyrian kings list inflates their patriarchal ages to hundreds and even thousands of years!

That the Egyptians had other sacred numbers that are also found in only the most sacred of Hebrew figures in Egypt (110 and 120) is even further evidence that the Hebrew people had no qualms using the sacred numbers of their captors in their own documents.

Yes, it's all circumstantial, but so is any discussion of ancient cultures certainly including the Hebrew culture! That there is ABSOLUTELY NO evidence that the Hebrew people differed in the use of chronologies at this time, nor that the use of sacred numbers in place of historical records was ever considered deceptive makes an argument that the Hebrew people accurately recorded these inflated ages (inflated by any current understanding of human age ranges) utterly baseless.

On one hand, you have people saying that they valued the same scientific precision we value today even though that's a very unbiblical suggestion! On the other hand, you have people suggesting that the Hebrew use of numbers was similar to those of the surrounding cultures (with which they interacted often as the OT recorded very nicely).

 

[crawfish]

This is often a key differential between TEs and YECs.

Yes, that is a big difference. YEC's see the Biblical writers as some sort of scribe, writing words put in their mind by God. TE's (at least myself) sees the writers as holy people writing the things put on their heart by God, in their own language, writing style, understanding and cultural context.

We also have a much different view of prophecy. You see it as predictions of the future, we see it as a warnings against what was happening at the time.

In the end, it's a difference in how we view God's interaction with our world. YEC's see God as having a constant, active role in everything going one at all times; TE's see God as having a direct role when answering prayer but lets the rules he set up over the universe guide most of what happens.

It's tough for me to study the history of how the bible was written and compiled and have the YEC view. It's tough for me to have the YEC view of God's role when I see how things get so messed up.

 

[busterdog]

. The prophecies don't so much as whisper about democracy, or science and technology, or globalization, or human rights, or entertainment, even though those are fundamental concepts of our times.

Its all in there. Babel, Judges, Revelation primarily. The future is monarchy, not democracy in any event.

 

[KTatis]

monarchy over democracy? Please tell me what makes you think this?

 

[laptoppop]

Jesus the King, ruling for all eternity.

 

[KTatis]

Thats not telling me anything. Jesus is king okay but what makes you guys think you would like a monarcy over democracy?

 

[laptoppop]

Jesus is king, yes -- but more importantly, He is King for all eternity to come. In other words, in heaven its a monarchy.

 

[Deamiter]

Isn't heaven more of a dictatorship since there's really no ongoing royal family that would be indicative of a monarchy? Jesus as king is more a description of how he deserves worship than a description of the actual form of government in heaven.

Anyway, even though it's basically on the topic of scripture, we'd probably do well to stay on the topic of C&E.

 

[gluadys]

Have you ever read Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus?

I had never heard of him or this book until yesterday when I had a rare opportunity to browse through a bookstore and noticed it. I was tempted to buy it, but didn't. Maybe I will next time I see it.

He's actually now a secular biblical scholar, but he was making the case that Paul's reference to subordinate role of woman, is in interpolation.

Very possible. Paul's authorship of several letters traditionally ascribed to him is disputed, and it would not be at all incredible that even some of his genuine letters were doctored (deliberately or accidently) by copyists.

We know that historically, the church became more mysogynist with time, forcing women out of leadership roles they had in the early centuries, choosing translations and interpretations that obscured the importance of women in the apostolic church. Rechristening the female apostle, Junia, whom Paul mentions in Romans, Junias, to make her look male, for example. Or translating "presbyterai" as "older women" rather than "female elders" when every use of the masculine form is translated "elder" with the context showing that it is an office of the church, not age per se, that is being referenced.

The other letters of Paul, seem to show that he had an egalitarian view of women's place in the church, while these disputed verses seem to come off as contradictory to that.

Certainly, Jesus' attitude toward women was revolutionary for the time, and Paul seems to have grasped that in his theology. It is when putting the principle into practice that difficulties arise and we get passages like these. Did you know that at one time medieval protectors of orthodoxy considered a group granting equality to women a strong indicator of heresy?

A little tidbit from another great book :

A World Without Women: the Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science by David F. Noble

 

[theFijian]

Thats not telling me anything. Jesus is king okay but what makes you guys think you would like a monarcy over democracy?

God is sovereign ergo he is King ergo we are his subjects. I didn't think this was anything particularly out of the ordinary.

 

[gluadys]

Jesus is king, yes -- but more importantly, He is King for all eternity to come. In other words, in heaven its a monarchy.

What kind of a monarchy though? An autocracy or a democracy? A constitutional monarchy is both a monarchy and a democracy. (I am a citizen of such a nation).

Doesn't the bible say something about us reigning with Christ?

 

[KTatis]

I heard he was suppose to reign on earth?

 

[busterdog]

Indeed I wouldn't quite talk about the Bible as just another book....

Thanks D, I was starting to twitch. Y'all know better than "just another book."

 

[busterdog]

I heard he was suppose to reign on earth?

Maybe Jesus is just symbolic of a flower that grows best on a nice grave. It reigns over the grass. Its metaphorical.

I can't believe this thread.

 

[theFijian]

I heard he was suppose to reign on earth?

That's what you hear when you hang around with dispensationalists.