Amen, and we'd have no idea when the Sabbath is if we could not recognize it as the 7th "day" of the week.
How come you are assuming that I am talking evolution when I have clearly stated that I don't believe in it? I am not sure that the universe came into being just because God said it and it magically jumped into being. God gave the word, there is no doubt about that, but exactly how that word of instruction was put into effect, we are not told. There is a problem when people read into the Bible what is not there and assumed that God just said it and it magically sprung out of nowhere.
To assert that the ancient Israelite cosmology is false is to assert that the cosmology as described in the OT is false. Since all scripture is inspired by God, one must assume that all of the OT writers were inspired by God and thus their writings that pertain describing our cosmology are indeed accurate.
You are comparing apples with oranges. The "days" of creation are written that way to help readers to understand that God created the world in a specific time-frame with each component in its ordered sequence, and that world with its living plants and beings did not evolve by chance. This does not prove that those "days" were 24 hour days. But because it said that God rested on the seventh "day" (and are we still in the seventh "day" where the Lord is resting from further creation? Probably), the seventh 24 hour day is reserved our day of rest. But your quote says that a day is only 12 hours! So there is another definition of "day". So if I go by your quote, then God created the world and everything in it in six 12 hour days!! Really?
Because the Bible was inspired by God, not dictated word for word, the writers in each time period the Bible was written would be influenced by the culture and the scientific beliefs of their day. Until scientific discovery in the Middle Ages showed that space was space and not a sea of waters surrounding the earth, that was what they believed. It is the same with Jesus and Paul, they taught to the people of their culture, without having any idea that things would change radically by the 21st Century. I think that Paul had no idea that there was going to be a 21st Century!
Are you saying that God dictated everything that Moses wrote word for word? Did Moses realise that when he compiled the Pentateuch that he was writing Holy Scripture inspired by God? I am not sure about that. We are not sure whether it was Moses who wrote it all, but a group of different authors who gave the credit to Moses for coordinating the writing. But then that is my guess, and my guess is as good as any. All we have to do is to read the history where Moses is mentioned in the third person to know that someone else wrote those sections. The popular and most logical theory about the compilation of the creation story is that the different oral traditions were collected and synthesised into what we know is the Biblical account of the creation. We also know that systems of written language existed long before Moses came on the scene, but any written records of the creation story may have been lost through the passage of time. We have no way of knowing whether there was written language before the Flood, but there very well could have been, but were lost in the Flood. We are not told whether Noah and his family could read and write, but that could very well be possible. Who knows? Asking questions like this is not questioning the inspiration of God in how Moses got his information about Creation because how he got the information is inconsequential to the fact that it was recognised b the Jewish religious leaders as inspired Scripture once it was set out in writing.
So some parts are inspired and other parts not? If "word for word" dictation is not so according to you, then what words in your opinion are inspired and what words by the same token, are not inspired? Is all of the creation account inspired or only part of it? Ps 19:6 describes the sun making its circuit to the other end. Does the sun orbit around the earth or does the earth orbit around the sun? Joshua in 10:12-13 commanded both the sun and the moon to stand still. The heliocentric model posits that the sun is stationary while the moon orbits around the earth. Was Joshua wrong in commanding the sun to stand still but correct in commanding the moon to stand still? In 2 Kings 20:9-11 and Isaiah 38:8, God caused the shadow of the sun to move back across Ahaz's stairs. In order for that to happen, under the heliocentric model, the earth would have had to suddenly stop moving at its equator at 1,000 mph, begin rotating in the opposite direction and then stop once more and return to spinning in its normal rotation. One only imagine what the inhabitants of the earth would experience under those conditions as it would be akin to a freight train suddenly slamming on its brakes; throwing its occupants violently forward. Given that biblical account, it is more plausible that the sun moves instead of the earth. I far as I can determine, the scriptures never depict a picture of a moving earth but instead a fixed and stationary earth.
Paul had a misogynistic streak? Your cultural bias is showing. Paul himself states that the reason for the different role of men and women in ministry is due to the created order of things - not misogyny.
You underestimate Moses. His was quite learned and educated as he grew up in Pharaoh's household. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand how the earth and cosmology functions. After all, we are taught the heliocentric model in grade school. The germane question is, is the heliocentric model consistent with, or opposed to God's Word?
Nothing I say is inspired. I wouldn't be so arrogant. It's all my own opinion. So that answers that question.
Paul was the only person who said it. Neither Jesus nor any of the other Apostles gave similar teaching. It is also a contradiction of Paul's own statement that there is neither man nor woman, Jew nor Gentile in the body of Christ.
It all depends on how extensively the Egyptians understood the cosmology of the universe. We don't know, because all records that might have given us more light were lost when the great library of Alexandria was destroyed.
It all depends on the definition of "days". There is a contradiction between the discoveries of the age of the earth through carbon dating and the standard fundamentalist interpretation of the Genesis account. If carbon dating of items was accurate for items less than 6000 years old as they have been, why not for items dated millions of years old? Is carbon dating for some items accurate and some not? And how do you determine the difference? How do you account for some distant stars that the light has only just reached us after travelling millions of years through space, that a supernova we have only just spotted happened so long ago? If the universe suddenly happened 6000 years ago, how could it be that light from a distant star, which was supposed to be created 6000 years ago, the light of which would take millions of years to reach us? If that was so, we wouldn't see the star, because its light would be still on its way to us and not reached us yet.
I did not state that YOU are inspired. I stated that Scripture is inspired. By virtue of your claim that Scripture was not dictated word for word, for all practical purposes you become the judge of which words are inspired and which are not. So that answers your question.
"Neither man or woman" is related to our position in Christ - not our functions in the body of Christ.
We have the biblical record which is more than adequate if you ask me. As I wrote earlier, children are taught cosmology in grade school. Not that difficult is it?
What I said was that Moses was not aware of the time of compiling the Genesis account that he was being inspired by God. The only direct evidence of God dictating word for word are the tablets on which the finger of God wrote the Ten Commandments. In fact they were more than dictations. God wrote them Himself. The only other words that were dictations word for word in the Old Testament were the prophecies that Moses and the Prophets received, and which were prefixed: "Thus says the Lord."
If the Bible is silent about something it means that God neither approves or disapproves of it. Paul acknowledges that the Old Testament was inspired, but then he is looking at them with the 20 20 vision of hindsight.
