Is the Bible reliable?

[gluadys]

FWIW, I'm not so sure "theistic evolution" attempts to say what timeframe God did all that he did.

You are quite right. TE generally doesn't set any timeframe for God.

Most TEs accept the scientific chronology of the history of the universe and of the earth and life on earth as factually correct. But it is understood that is not to be found in biblical literature which is completely pre-scientific.

The creation stories are simply unhistoric and primordial, so do not correspond to any human timeline.

 

[gluadys]

The genre is not normally considered poetry, but the criticism is that it is midrashic.

The questioning is how much is driven by actual events, and how much the prose has been driven by finding explanations for the death of the messiah in Old Testament texts and sayings of Jesus.

I will an example. There is the story of Judasm who in one account hangs himself and in another is that he split himself open on rocks, like an old wine skin that could not contain the new wine.
Another would be the story of Barabbas, which is modeled on a very similar story in the Greek.

It is prose and it is theology to be sure, but how reliable is the history?
After so much of what was considered history in the OT is seen as prose and legend and theology, the same trends are seen in the NT.

It is after all the works of the same Jewish culture.

Look higher:

2 Peter 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.

2 Timothy 3:16 - All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

Acts 1:16 - Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.

Acts 28:25 - And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,

These two perspectives are not in contradiction with each other. Every one of those texts still refers to people writing what they were inspired to write within the framework of "the same Jewish culture". That cultural tradition is going to affect how and what they write, even under inspiration.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Yhvh said simply how He created the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them.

Mankind simply sinned, continues sinning, and has corrupted everything.

Trust Yhvh, obey Yhvh, and Live. trust men, and perish.

yes, simplistic. simplistic and true. and the way to life is simple. not messed up like men.

 

[gluadys]

Easy. and probably obvious.

"Six DAYS you shall labor...for in six DAYS the Lord made..." only works one way - days are days.

Not "six eons shall you labor.. for in 6 undefined uniits of long ages God made..." was "obviously" not how the author or his readers took the text and the meaning of day.

Why could not the six days of the Ten Commandments be ordinary human days symbolizing the six divine days of undetermined length of Genesis?

All that is required for evening and morning to work - is a rotating planet and a single-sided light source.

But that is committing modernist eisegesis: inserting modern extra-biblical information into the text. Indeed, up until the 18th century, no one described the earth as a planet. If you had asked Moses what a planet is, he would have told you a planet is a heavenly body. Venus, Mars, Saturn etc. are planets in the heavens. He would have told you planets are light-producing bodies; wandering stars that move from one to another constellation of fixed stars. And if you had asked him "Is Earth a planet?" he would have answered, "Of course not!! What a ridiculous idea. The earth is earthly, not a heavenly body. It is established on foundations and does not move as planets do. Why would you ever call the earth a planet?"

Same goes for "rotating". Until early modern times, people did not think of the earth rotating at all. They thought of the heavenly bodies rotating around the earth. For example, in Ecclesiastes 1:5 it says "The sun rises and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises." The last phrase is important because it shows that the writer, unlike we moderns, was not using "rise" and "set" figuratively or phenomenologically, but as a literally factual description of the movement of the sun. For it is only if he thinks the sun actually and actively rises and sets (with no help from a rotating earth) that he also thinks it needs to hurry through the night back to the place of its rising.


So when you introduce the idea of a rotating planet into your interpretation of Genesis, you are using an outside the-text agenda. You are forcing into the text things that Moses did not teach, nor any other biblical author either. Indeed, not only biblical authors, but Jews and Christians up to the 16th century would not have explained the alternation of light and dark, day and night in terms of a rotating planet because in their view 1) the earth is not a planet and 2) in any case, the earth does not rotate.

The biblical authors did not teach these things, because they had no knowledge of modern astronomy--just like they had no knowledge of modern geology and no knowledge of evolution.

Now, unlike you, I have no objection to your use of an outside-the-text agenda to assist in interpreting the text. But I consider it seriously hypocritical to use an outside-the-text agenda to bring modern astronomy to bear on your understanding of the text and yet condemn those who do the same for geology and evolution.

We do not need to know what the light source was - because as long as the Earth was rotating and the light source was only on one side - you would have "evening and morning".

But Moses never taught that the earth is rotating; he never even taught that the earth is a planet. You are not exegeting the text. You are eisegeting modern astronomy into the text contrary to what either the author or the original audience would have understood.

 

[BobRyan]

Yhvh said simply how He created the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them.

Mankind simply sinned, continues sinning, and has corrupted everything.

Trust Yhvh, obey Yhvh, and Live. trust men, and perish.

yes, simplistic. simplistic and true. and the way to life is simple. not messed up like men.

Agreed. And it appears that both James Barr and Gluadys admit to the intended meaning of the author of scripture - but neither of them accept the historicity of the text's message.

By contrast many Christians do accept the historicity of the Bible accounts.

 

[BobRyan]

How do you know what "face value" is without some context to frame it?

Easy. and probably obvious.

"Six DAYS you shall labor...for in six DAYS the Lord made..." only works one way - days are days.

Not "six eons shall you labor.. for in 6 undefined uniits of long ages God made..." was "obviously" not how the author or his readers took the text and the meaning of day.

Some would argue that the face value there - is incredibly obvious.

No Catholic outsourcing would be needed to figure that out.

(The answer is that the Catholic Church has said context and the authority to interpret it. You, on the other hand, choose NOT to accept John 6 at face value...right?)

In John 6 Christ said "literal flesh is worthliess it is my Words that have spirit and life" to explain the symbols after saying "I AM the Bread that CAME down out of heaven:.

No Catholics claim that manna fell in the form of Jesus or that Israel ate Jesus in the wilderness and they do not claim that Jesus came to Mary as "bread" falling out of the sky etc. And of course - nobody "bites Christ" in John 6.

So then I am not the only one to admit to symbols in John 6.

(If your eye had a mind of its own to lead you into sin - you might want to consider wearing a patch.)

Christ accurately describes the dire nature of the issue.

In my 15 irrefutable points posted here on this thread -

- one of them is that the same Christians that accept the truth of the Bible in Genesis 1 regarding the day timeline God placed there - are the guys who say that Revelation and Daniel and Song of Solomon are filled with symbols, allegory , metaphors etc.

It is beyond question.

the fact that something is a poem or a symbol does not mean the entire bible is symbol -- obviously.

No, you're right. But knowing what's symbol, what's real, and so on requires context. What is a day to God?

God "is capable" of describing a 7 day week - as it turns out.

And His own summary of the 7 day week of Gen 1:2-2:3 is given in Ex 20:11 as part of Ex 20:8-11 "six days you shall labor..for in six days the Lord made.." .

legal code that is sooooo incredibly obvious that even the newly freed Egyptian slaves at Sinai had no need to outsource to the RCC to figure out what time frame God was talking about.

And there's not one text in Scripture that says that Mary had other children, either. But you assume she did.

I don't recall making that assumption.

But assuming she did or did not -- has nothing to do with "7 days is not really 7 days no matter what the Bible says to the contrary".

What defines evening and morning when there's not yet a sun and a moon?

And neither do I. But what is a day when there is no sun or moon? And what is time to God?

All that is required for evening and morning to work - is a rotating planet and a single-sided light source.

We do not need to know what the light source was - because as long as the Earth was rotating and the light source was only on one side - you would have "evening and morning".

I guess we all knew that.

Exegesis - "Six DAYS you shall labor...for in six DAYS the Lord made..." only works one way - days are days.

Eisegesis - "SIX real days you shall labor...for in six indefinite blocks of unknown ages of time the Lord made so as to fit the story of evolution".

The reason it is eisegesis is that the text does not say it - and neither the reader nor the writer were making any attempt at all to accommodate the fiction we call evolution -

And of course James Barr admits that this is the meaning that all Hebrew scholars in all world-class universities accept that the writer had - even though they object to the historicity of the details.

Why could not the six days of the Ten Commandments be ordinary human days symbolizing the six divine days of undetermined length of Genesis?

You can't have six undetermined when all of it is undetermined - so it is a logical fallacy to start with.

Secondly the attempt to eisegete in the idea that "evening and morning is a divine unit of undefined time" is not found even once in all of scripture.

It has be "invented" -- eisegeted on the spot.

Ecclesiastes 1:5 it says "The sun rises and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises." The last phrase is important because it shows that the writer, unlike we moderns, was not using "rise" and "set" figuratively or phenomenologically, but as a literally factual description of the movement of the sun.

Einstein has already settled the question of motion described in terms of observational frame of reference. You object to the Bible and also object to even looking at the description of motion that Einstein affirms --

How "convenient" for your objection to it.

So when you introduce the idea of a rotating planet into your interpretation of Genesis, you are using an outside the-text agenda. You are forcing into the text things that Moses did not teach

You are using an any-ol-excuse straw-man because in my statement I never claim "Moses was describing the rotating planet" - I merely explain how the observation that Moses made - can be seen even in our own limited knowledge of nature.

I don't try to change the text or the meaning to get there.

And even Barr admits to the meaning found in the Genesis 1 text.

Now, unlike you, I have no objection to your use of an outside-the-text agenda to assist in interpreting the text. But I consider it seriously hypocritical to use an outside-the-text agenda to bring modern astronomy to bear on your understanding of the text and yet condemn those who do the same for geology and evolution.

You are using the fallacy of equivocation - and it does not work as we can all see.

I do not bring in an outside agenda to excuse an act of changing the obvious intended meaning of the text. A meaning so obvious that Barr admits ALL Hebrew scholars in all world-class universities admit to the point of the "meaning" the author is given - being just as blatantly obvious as even you admitted that it was.

You are reaching for straws trying to extricate your argument from that difficulty.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[MoreCoffee]

If we're looking for perfect harmony and complete reliability in the sense of having no irreducible disagreements then why are there four gospels in the new testament three of which are clearly related and one of which is very different from the others. And why do the three synoptic gospels suggest that Jesus died on the day after the Passover lamb was sacrificed when the feast of unleavened bread had already started (on the day before the crucifixion) while the fourth gospel suggests that Jesus died at approximately the time that the Passover lamb was sacrificed so that the last supper would fall before the feast of unleavened bread had started giving rise to the tradition of using unleavened bread in the celebration of the holy Eucharist? Clearly this is an irreducible difference. So why are there four canonical gospels? There was in fact, in history, in time, one Jesus not four, nor two, so why four gospels when having four leads to at least one (and there are many more than one) irreducible differences in the gospel accounts?

 

[gluadys]

I don't think we can assume they weren't Neanderthals themselves. Scripture says nothing about their species. Species anyway is in a significant way a human construct, not something where hard lines exist in a really objective way.

I don't doubt myself that Neanderthals were people in the Christian sense - the evidence shows that they had a spiritual life, so they weren't animals.

True. I don't think we can correlate Adam and Eve with a particular Homo species. If they were a pair of actual individuals they could have been a predecessor species such as H. erectus or H. heidelburgenesis. And even if they were H. sapiens, they would not need to be first-generation H. sapiens.

 

[gluadys]

We can believe, and I do, that the problem isn't with Scripture or Science, it's with our understanding of them. I believe the Bible account to be accurate, and Science, to the best of its ability, to be accurate. I believe scientists who leave God out of their equation, to be wrong. Any description of Creation, when and how and by whom the Universe was made, which extracts the God of the Universe from the 'formula', to be wrong. In other words, the only problem I see between Genesis and the modern scientific theories of how the universe began is the lack of God in the theory, whether or not the theory is right or wrong. And I don't waste time worrying about it.
Creation is ancient man's attempt to describe what God did. Evolutionary theory is modern man's attempt, and often leaves God out of it. But I believe the Bible tells us how to go to heaven (Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth), and Science tries to tell us how the heavens go. Two different things which often talk past each other.

I would say that even a theist must resist the idea that God is ever part of a theory. In science, a theory is established through testing and observing physical phenomena, often under controlled conditions. To put God "into" a theory, one would need to put human scientists in a position of controlling what God does. One would have to be able to differentiate, for example, between a chemical reaction in which God is active (like a catalyst?) and the same chemical reaction when God is not active.

But this is quite impossible with science as we know it. We can only describe the chemical reaction. Whether we attribute that reaction to God or conclude there is no God is a theological issue, not a scientific issue.

Unfortunately, it is the case that because science cannot explicitly tell us God is present in nature, many people assume it tells us God is absent. Most unfortunately, this falsehood is often promoted as much by Christian believers as it is by atheists.

The real solution to this is not to oppose science but to improve education in the churches so that no matter what atheists say, believers never support the idea that "natural" = "godless".

We might say that in all things science describes the work of God. Even when it is an atheist who makes a significant scientific discovery. And even when an atheist misinterprets science to exclude God.

 

[gluadys]

I don't know about known and measurable. Science, with an agenda of its own, measures data and comes up with global warming, and blames it on man. So I don't know about trusting Science either. (It's true that the globe is warming and cooling, but it's not provable that man is responsible for it!)

Actually, it is very provable and proven. (At least so far as science "proves" anything anyway. Science deals with evidence, not logical or mathematical proof.)

It gets my goat in a way that people seem never to realize that scientists themselves questioned whether the warming they were measuring was simply nature taking its course or had a human component as well. Of course scientists looked into all known causes of global warming. They have measured the output of the sun, the changing albedo of the earth, the production of methane by ruminant animals and pretty much everything you can think of. They can tell you quite accurately what percentage of current global warming is not produced by human activity.

And what they can also tell you is that there is no way to account for the current rapid increase in global mean temperature except through the addition of greenhouse gases, especially, but not only CO2, by human activity.

In the early 1990s, it was still an open question whether human activity contributed significantly to climate change. Nearly two decades later that question has been definitively closed. Yes, human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has changed the climate, is changing the climate and will continue to do so until human activity changes. How much it will change depends on how quickly and how strongly we take action now. We could be triggering tipping points (such as massive releases of methane from melting permafrost) within a year or two that will send temperatures spiking like nothing we have seen yet.

All the information is available for your perusal on-line in the 3rd, 4th and 5th reports of the IPCC. And if you don't trust the organization, don't. But do trust the data. (And remember IPCC reports are the most conservative evaluations of the scientific community. As individuals many scientists think we are much further along the road to global disaster than is stated in the official reports.)

 

[Root of Jesse]

I would say that even a theist must resist the idea that God is ever part of a theory. In science, a theory is established through testing and observing physical phenomena, often under controlled conditions. To put God "into" a theory, one would need to put human scientists in a position of controlling what God does. One would have to be able to differentiate, for example, between a chemical reaction in which God is active (like a catalyst?) and the same chemical reaction when God is not active.

But this is quite impossible with science as we know it. We can only describe the chemical reaction. Whether we attribute that reaction to God or conclude there is no God is a theological issue, not a scientific issue.

Unfortunately, it is the case that because science cannot explicitly tell us God is present in nature, many people assume it tells us God is absent. Most unfortunately, this falsehood is often promoted as much by Christian believers as it is by atheists.

The real solution to this is not to oppose science but to improve education in the churches so that no matter what atheists say, believers never support the idea that "natural" = "godless".

We might say that in all things science describes the work of God. Even when it is an atheist who makes a significant scientific discovery. And even when an atheist misinterprets science to exclude God.

We must understand that the Science/Religion dichotomy is a false one. If Science appears to contradict Scripture, then Science is wrong in its understanding of what Scripture tells us.
For example, people don't understand (at least many people) what the debate was between Galileo and the Catholic Church. It wasn't about whether the Earth was the center of the Solar System (or universe) as opposed to the thought that the Sun was the center. That had been figured out years before, though we didn't have instruments to prove it. The debate was whether it could be taught as fact, with certainty, as Galileo wanted (and did, in defiance of Church decree). That defiance is what landed him in hot water.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Actually, it is very provable and proven. (At least so far as science "proves" anything anyway. Science deals with evidence, not logical or mathematical proof.)

It gets my goat in a way that people seem never to realize that scientists themselves questioned whether the warming they were measuring was simply nature taking its course or had a human component as well. Of course scientists looked into all known causes of global warming. They have measured the output of the sun, the changing albedo of the earth, the production of methane by ruminant animals and pretty much everything you can think of. They can tell you quite accurately what percentage of current global warming is not produced by human activity.

And what they can also tell you is that there is no way to account for the current rapid increase in global mean temperature except through the addition of greenhouse gases, especially, but not only CO2, by human activity.

In the early 1990s, it was still an open question whether human activity contributed significantly to climate change. Nearly two decades later that question has been definitively closed. Yes, human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has changed the climate, is changing the climate and will continue to do so until human activity changes. How much it will change depends on how quickly and how strongly we take action now. We could be triggering tipping points (such as massive releases of methane from melting permafrost) within a year or two that will send temperatures spiking like nothing we have seen yet.

All the information is available for your perusal on-line in the 3rd, 4th and 5th reports of the IPCC. And if you don't trust the organization, don't. But do trust the data. (And remember IPCC reports are the most conservative evaluations of the scientific community. As individuals many scientists think we are much further along the road to global disaster than is stated in the official reports.)

And yet there are many scientists who disagree with the man-caused aspect of 'climate change'.

 

[Root of Jesse]

As noted above - no serious scholar at any world class university takes seriously the idea that Moses intended to write poetic mythology - but rather was writing a real account of history - 24 hour days.

What universities would those be? Specifically. Would Notre Dame or Georgetown qualify? How about Franciscan University of Steubenville?

And in their view - he was simply wrong.

Earlier you sated that the bible is instead of being "poetic myth" -- the actual Word of God the Holy Spirit.

Are you trying to say that poetic myth cannot teach us the truths God intended to teach? In that case, I vehemently disagree. "Myth" does not mean "untrue".

And now we have Bible scholars telling us that not one of them takes seriously the wild notion that the text is not trying to convey a literal 7 day week.

I have never questioned whether it was a literal 7 day week. I have questioned your definition of literal, and your understanding of "week".

The obvious point of the discussion -- apparent for all objective unbiased Bible students by now. Hence the title of the thread. You can be "in the tank" for blind faith evolutionism - or you can accept the Word of God as reliable - but not both.

I am not in the tank for blind faith evolutionism any more than I am in the tank for blind faith Bible-only thought. Both are extremes, and I disagree with elements of both while supporting the facts of both.

To express Dawkins "flying spaghetti monster" myth/fiction in poetic terms does not argue for it being reliable or something in which to place your trust as if we can do it "because... err...umm... because it is poetic after all" (in Dawkins case).

As James Barr writes - the Genesis account is intended as a historic account - of actual facts, a 7 day literal week.. and in his mind - the writer of it is simply ignorant/wrong by his standards.

in Christ,

Bob

Who IS Christ to you? Is He God?

 

[Root of Jesse]

And by that --- you really mean...



Really?? fiction? myth? poetic-or-not. (and as Dr Barr points out in Genesis 1 - not).

What sort of double speak would that be??

in Christ,

Bob

I don't see one place where MoreCoffee said or implied "fiction".

 

[Root of Jesse]

It's obvious that when your statements against the Catholic Church are shown to be false you move on to yet another set of smoke and mirrors distractions so that the falsification of your claim can be buried under a mass of irrelevant text. You ought to acknowledge that the claims you made about the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding sacred scripture (shown in bold text) were wrong (demonstrated in red bold text) but so far you have failed to do that.

AMEN Brother!

 

[gluadys]

And yet there are many scientists who disagree with the man-caused aspect of 'climate change'.

No there are not. There are a handful of shills for the oil companies. And most of them are geologists not climatologists.

The acceptance of anthropogenic climate change among people who actually study climate is as close to 100% as the acceptance of evolution among biologists, the acceptance of an old age for the earth among geologists, and the acceptance of big bang theory by astrophysicists.

 

[Root of Jesse]

No there are not. There are a handful of shills for the oil companies. And most of them are geologists not climatologists.

The acceptance of anthropogenic climate change among people who actually study climate is as close to 100% as the acceptance of evolution among biologists, the acceptance of an old age for the earth among geologists, and the acceptance of big bang theory by astrophysicists.

That's what you like to believe, but I disagree. There's lots of Christian scientists who disavow anthropogenic climate change, too. Is Global Warming a Hoax? | RealClearPolitics

Back to topic.

 

[gluadys]

We also spend time considering that we are not the first to read sacred scripture; there is a history of christian reading and contemplation, commentary and careful analysis, scholarly and devotional reading that we ought to use and benefit from. And even more significant there is the two thousand year long history of the church in which truth has been searched out and taught while error has been examined, weighed, and rejected with reasons stated and the faithful alerted to its presence. Without the elements of literary rather than literal reading, the benefits we obtain from the long history of interpretation, and the church's vigilance over truth and rejection of error one cannot read the scriptures and obtain the maximum benefit from so doing.

I think this is an important point. In my teen years I was confronted with a choice between my "liberal" Sunday church environment and a more "evangelical" version in my after-school Bible club. A key element in moving away from the latter was the complete absence of a sense of history. It was as if nothing happened between the day St. John the Divine laid down his pen and this morning's news. So in that community, the bible was read as if it were today's newspaper. And I just felt that was not right. One loses an anchorage, as it were, when one loses history. One does not become aware of one's own biases and assumptions as one takes them for granted and takes for granted all readers of scripture have read it in the same way. And that is just not so.

To take a secular example, most of us know that in the Robin Hood stories, King John is a villain. But when you get to Shakespeare's play, King John is a hero, defending England from the pope--a message a Protestant monarch was happy to support. Then, the pendulum swings back the other way with the rise of Parliament over the power of the monarchy. He becomes the abject monarch forced to heed the will of the people who successfully demand he sign the Magna Carta. Who knows? Maybe he will be rehabilitated in another age yet to come.

In matters of faith as well as secular matters, history gives us an important depth of understanding beyond those for whom "tradition" is no older than their grandfather.

 

[gluadys]

It is the religion that Darwin chose over Christianity - with a "story" on origins completely contrary to the Bible account of the origin of all life on planet earth.

From what I have read of Darwin's biography, he did not choose any religion in place of Christianity. He tended to waver between deism and agnosticism, not settling for one or the other, but refused to affirm atheism.

I don't think he would have called his theory of natural selection a religion. In his writings, he calls it a theory.

Obviously.

Not so obvious.

Belief and acceptance of the literal 7 day week of Genesis among Christians prevailed many centuries BEFORE blind faith evolutionism was ever imagined into its popular form today.

Another way of stating the same thing.
Now, you see, I would have thought creationism would have something to do with believing God is the creator. But no, you who call yourselves creationists turn away from a fundamental doctrine of the faith to make "creationism" a matter of rejecting science in order to support your hermeneutic.

You are not defending the Creator.
You are not defending the doctrine of creation.
You are not even defending the inspired scripture when it speaks about God creating the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.

You are only defending a particular, sectarian interpretation of scripture identified by its rejection of known facts because it doesn't fit the way you choose to interpret the text.

We call holy scripture those writings deemed to be inspired in the tradition of the church. But interpretations are the product of fallible human minds, not inspired at all.

You are a Christian that believes in evolutionism no matter that you stated that the Gen 1-2 text and Ex 20:8-11 text describe a literal 7 day creation origins statement - fully contrary to the long undefined ages of evolutionism.

My faith is in Christ and nothing else. But one thing I believe about Christ is that he is the Word of God without whom nothing that exists was a made. Therefore, I do not believe Christ is a lying Word who made a lying world. So I do accept facts, observation, evidence, tested hypotheses, well-established theories which accurately describe the world made by Christ the Word.

There is solid evidence that much of the world is as described in science. There is zero evidence that your dogmatic interpretive mode is an accurate rendition of the message of scripture.

 

[BobRyan]

True. I don't think we can correlate Adam and Eve with a particular Homo species. If they were a pair of actual individuals they could have been a predecessor species such as H. erectus or H. heidelburgenesis. And even if they were H. sapiens, they would not need to be first-generation H. sapiens.

Which makes the Gospel nonsense since it means that actual humans are all doomed to the lake of fire because a subhuman species "had a bad thought" one day.

What a far cry from the actual Gospel!!

Same is true for God having to come and die for the supposed "sin" of a subhuman species that has dragged all the rest of us into the gates of hell.

How nice that the Bible describes no such origin.

7 days just is not enough to shoehorn in a subhuman species story.

in Christ,

Bob