Adam and Eve spoke What language?

[Jig]

Do you believe this first souled human had a non-separated relationship with God before his first sinful act? Would his mother be able to comprehend this relationship he had with God, being that she was not a human with a soul?

 

[Mallon]

Do you believe this first souled human had a non-separated relationship with God before his first sinful act?

Yes.

Would his mother be able to comprehend this relationship he had with God, being that she was not a human with a soul?

Don't know. Makes no difference one way or another.

 

[Jig]

Yes.

If he had not sinned, would he have lived forever?

 

[Assyrian]

My question just shows the irrational implications of believing that mental capacity to sin against God somehow evolved in humans. Either you're capable or you're not, there is no middle ground. There must be a line that was crossed. Did the humans on the non-capable side still need Jesus? Or were they like dogs and geese?

Infants don't have the mental capacity to sin, yet somehow they manage to develop into adults with the mental capacity to sin.

It appears the only true difference (in terms of physical and mental make-up) between this soul-less non-culpable mother and her child who has a soul and was culpable for its actions is negligible. Would we have been able to tell the difference just be sight that one was human and one was not?

Interestingly, we still cannot do that with children who commit appalling crimes today. The tabloids of course bay for blood, but the prosecution service have a much more difficult job of calmly deciding how much the children really understood. The same with mentally handicapped. Only God really knows. But the fact that we cannot really tell when a child grows from being too young to understand to being responsible for his actions does not mean children do not develop from not understanding right and wrong to understanding and being responsible.

Still not answering grasping's question? You brought it up after the thread was dormant five months.

 

[Hairy Tic]

It was obviously Esperanto.

## Since God gave them a kilt and a shawl before casting them out, this is most unlikely. It is self-evident that they spoke Scots Gaelic.

 

[Hairy Tic]

Evolved enough to rebel? So where are all the children they had before the fall? Is their anyone out there who has lived forever?
Adam was clever enough to name all the animals, but couldnt talk properly?
sooo is Noah at metaphor? Is Abraham a metaphor?
Is Moses and the Exodus a Metaphor?
Was Joe really sold into exile, only to become pirime minister of Egypt?

Where do you draw the line from when Gen actually becomes history?

## By examining the literary genres of the texts. And using any evidence there may be from archaeology, anthropology, and other sciences to give greater precision to the preliminary conclusions one has reached.

After all, if Joshua's long day takes for granted a cosmology now known to be mistaken, it can't have happened.

The text is not at the mercy of mere caprice; it just needs to be interpreted in a way that does not exclude the possibility of revising the interpretations already reached.

BTW, where does the Bible say Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Exodus, are historical as described in the OT ? Or that the texts about the Exodus are talking only of one event ? Why can't some or all of these people and events be as legendary as the Greek myths ? And why must they be historical from our POV, and not be historical from the POV of the OT authors, who might have had ideas of history quite different from ours ?

If tongues of confusion at Babel are a metaphor, was speaking in tongues at pentecost a metaphor?

## Not necessarily. Genesis 11 may be a Hebrew version of a Sumerian myth. That does not make Pentecost a fiction.

 

[Hairy Tic]

Interesting how the Tree of Life makes a reappearance in Rev 22 right at the end of the Bible. Coincidence?

## Evidence that the author of Revelation knew his Bible, and thought the Crucifixion to be of great significance. And was a literary artist & theologian.

 

[Jig]

"historical as described in the OT"

Why would the Biblical authors describe Noah, Abraham, and Jacob differently then who they actually were? What was wrong with the original historical people?

Did the death and resurrection of Jesus happen historically as described? Are you sure it wasn't influenced by legendary or earlier ancient myths?

It seems like you want to down play the supernatural events in the Bible. It seems you don't want to accept miraculous events as historical events. Why?

 

[Hairy Tic]

"historical as described in the OT"

Why would the Biblical authors describe Noah, Abraham, and Jacob differently then who they actually were?

## But what were they ?

Did the death and resurrection of Jesus happen historically as described? Are you sure it wasn't influenced by legendary or earlier ancient myths?

##The Resurrection is not an historical event - history is too small a category for something as big as the Resurrection. It's an act of God, not an historical event; just as the Creation is not an historical event. There are no analogies in history for it; only in mythology, which it fulfils.

Such a thing can't be described, only proclaimed.

It seems like you want to down play the supernatural events in the Bible. It seems you don't want to accept miraculous events as historical events. Why?

## That was a rather abbreviated way of saying "Where does the Bible say Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Exodus, are historical from the POV of the OT authors as they present them; given that what we call history does not necessarily match what they might have considered to be history (if they had had such a notion ) ? We have to ask, "historical (& what do we mean by that ?) by whose standards ?" What we cannot do is take for granted the validity, for the understanding of the Bible, of our ideas, which are very much later & from a very different set of cultures. The OT is ferociously complex - & this has to be respected.

Miracles are not historical, any more than God is. Whether or not the miraculous is a valid Biblical category, miracles (& what is a miracle ?) can't be treated like historical events - they are different in kind. That does not make such events, if real, unreal.

 

[Jig]

Miracles are not historical, any more than God is. Whether or not the miraculous is a valid Biblical category, miracles (& what is a miracle ?) can't be treated like historical events - they are different in kind. That does not make such events, if real, unreal.

So the a six day creation, global flood, and a worldwide language overhaul could be real, but just not historical?

 

[Mallon]

If he had not sinned, would he have lived forever?

Nope. Not unless God granted him access to a magical tree that gave everlasting life.

 

[Jig]

Nope. Not unless God granted him access to a magical tree that gave everlasting life.

So you would agree that this post is ridiculous and impossible:

http://www.christianforums.com/t7524796/#post56467650

Thank you.

Also, from your answer it seems that you believe sin only brought on spiritual death and NOT physical death.

Why did Jesus have to physically die for our sins then?

 

[Hairy Tic]

So the a six day creation, global flood, and a worldwide language overhaul could be real, but just not historical?

## Respectively:

• six-day creation = a literary device of the Priestly writer reflecting his interest in chronology. But not a diary of the work of creation
• global flood = Hebrew adaptation of the Akkadian version of the Sumerian flood-myth, which is probably based on real events, such as an exceptionably severe flood in what is now Iraq. The Hebrew story has been made into a vehicle for Israel's faith. The earth is that known to the Israelites, not to us - by our standards, who live in a far larger world than the Israelites & their neighbours, it would not be global, but local
  
• worldwide language - it is not entirely clear that Gen.11 is talking about the whole world, even as known to the author. What is clear is that there is nothing here that can help in reconstructing the history of language; that is not the point of the story.
  

Some events mentioned in the OT may be "historical" in some sense - there may have been a real exodus or two behind the account of the Biblical Exodus; but it doesn't follow that the events have not been embroidered and theologised.

The first three events are not history, but something called primeval history. They are different from history just as the Resurrection is, but not for the same reason.

 

[Jig]

## Respectively:

• six-day creation = a literary device of the Priestly writer reflecting his interest in chronology. But not a diary of the work of creation

That's your opinion and assumption based on your interpretation of the collective evidence. I, too, have opinions based on my theological and philosophical beliefs. I believe that God actually and really created in six literal days and that the author of Genesis one is recording true events in exact detail.

On a side note: the status quo in academia on who authored Genesis has been changing in the last ten years. Many theologians and Biblical scholars no longer accept the documentary hypothesis as feasible.

• global flood = Hebrew adaptation of the Akkadian version of the Sumerian flood-myth, which is probably based on real events, such as an exceptionably severe flood in what is now Iraq. The Hebrew story has been made into a vehicle for Israel's faith. The earth is that known to the Israelites, not to us - by our standards, who live in a far larger world than the Israelites & their neighbours, it would not be global, but local

This again is based on how you've interpreted the collective evidence - which is directly influenced by your philosophical and theological perspective. Again I, too, have my own opinion. I believe that the preponderance of early and global flood myths not only came from a real event but that this event was the same global flood mentioned in Genesis. Not some large localized flood in Iraq.

The first three events are not history, but something called primeval history.

I don't care what you wish to call it. I'm suggesting it actually happened the exact way it was reported to us by the author(s) of Genesis.

 

[Assyrian]

Also, from your answer it seems that you believe sin only brought on spiritual death and NOT physical death.

Why did Jesus have to physically die for our sins then?

So we could die to our sins and be raised up in his resurrection life.

Rom 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

 

[Jig]

So we could die to our sins and be raised up in his resurrection life.

Rom 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

So God's original design (before sin entered the world) was for humans to live a period of time and then die a physical death?

What was the point of life then?

 

[Assyrian]

So God's original design (before sin entered the world) was for humans to live a period of time and then die a physical death?

What was the point of life then?

What does the bible say God's original purpose was?

 

[theFijian]

So God's original design (before sin entered the world) was for humans to live a period of time and then die a physical death?

What was the point of life then?

Well if they weren't going to die, what was the point of the tree of Life?

 

[Papias]

On a side note: the status quo in academia on who authored Genesis has been changing in the last ten years. Many theologians and Biblical scholars no longer accept the documentary hypothesis as feasible.

While that's true, what you've written could be misleading. The main realization from the documentary hypothesis (DP) was that no single author, and certainly not moses, wrote the pentateuch. The newer hypotheses, and there are scores of them, agree that moses didn't write the pentateuch, and nearly always have many authors writing it. The main departure from the DP is that they often have MORE separate authors, such as the Fragmentary Hypothesis.

I've seen many uninformed Christians state that the DP is outdated as a way to suggest that modern Bible scholars are going back to the idea that Moses wrote it, when in fact that's not the case at all, and the newer ideas that now compete with the DP are, like the DP, rejections of authorship by Moses, or even by a single person.

Jig, you don't have to take my word for it either, here is one example of a review of current thought:
http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/10_126.pdf

Jig, in light of that, do you agree that modern Bible Scholars are practically unanimous that Moses didn't write it, and that many authors are involved, over a long period of time?

Papias

 

[lucaspa]

Also, from your answer it seems that you believe sin only brought on spiritual death and NOT physical death.

Absolutely. If you read the Hebrew, Adam was supposed to die "in the day" he ate the fruit. The Hebrew word is very specific there and it limits the time to a 24 hour day. In fact, it is the same word used in Genesis 2:2 and 3 to limit the 7th day to 24 hours. But Adam did not physically die. So the death must be referring to spiritual death -- which is much worse.

Also, if you go back to Genesis 1, God specifically makes provision for food for people. And again in Genesis 2. Why do people have to eat? So they do not starve -- to death. If we don't eat, we die. So physical death was already present.

Why did Jesus have to physically die for our sins then?

Not only die, but suffer. Partly to show that life after physical death was possible. Partly because the animal offerings -- which Jesus symbolizes -- involved the physical death of the animal. And partly to show the divine nature of Jesus, that he resurrected after his death.