allegorical genesis

[FreezBee]

Luke 1:70 kaqwV {ACCORDING AS} elalhsen {HE SPOKE} dia {BY [THE]} stomatoV twn {MOUTH} agiwn twn ap {HOLY} aiwnoV {SINCE TIME BEGAN} profhtwn {PROPHETS} autou {OF HIS;}


translates to "Since time began:" Some newer translations are a bit more PC, and say "from old" or "from the earliest times" but this is not accurate to the old texts. Adam would have been the first prophet, but Enoch, Methuselah and a few others were more major prophets.

"aionos" simply means "ages", not necessarily "since time began", and even accepting this interpretation, what prophecies do we have from Adam, Enoch, Methuselah & Co.?

Jesus is in this chapter condemning divorce. It was not necessary for him to bring up the Creation at all, and yet he did. Again the new version has some interesting discrepancies. The quote marks are no where found in the original Greek neither is there any evidence that this was merely a quote.

Jesus is discussing with the Pharisees about divorce, and in that connection he refers to Mosaic Law:

Mark 10
1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

3 "What did Moses command you?" he replied.

4 They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

5 "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

So, you see, Jesus is turning Mosaic Law against the Pharisees

What makes you think this was meant?

Ok, we'll take it again - The 4th Commandment:

Exodus 11
8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The week, 6 days of work, 1 day of rest, is repeating itself, isn't it? Was the sabbath only to be kept once, because God had only rested once? It for the argumentation here not of any importance whether we have one creation week, or we consider every week to be creation week.

Ok, does this help?


- FreezBee

 

[JRNetwork]

Yes I think we already went over that.
Creation every 6 days, there is life on other planets.
Creation only once, keep the sabbath holy only once.

The second one doesnt work, and the first one is not likely. So it is clear that the "days" are not litteral.

 

[HairlessSimian]

Jeremiah 33:22
“As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.”

Considering that only about 3,000 can be seen with the naked eye, and that you can easily count that many in a couple handfulls of sand, I'd say thats something

This verse says nothing about the number of stars.

1 Corinthians 15:41
There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

Hmm.. Now how can something so far away be seen to have differences so great that they are unlike each other....

This verse says nothing clear at all.

Job 28:25
To establish a weight for the wind,
And apportion the waters by measure.

I dont think it has been very long since it has been discovered that air actually has weight.

This verse is also cryptic. It says nothing about the weight of air.

 

[HairlessSimian]

3a. The Judeo-Christian god is written about in the world's most copied and preserved ancient literature with phenominal accuracy unparalleled in other ancient writings.
3b. If you read the Judeo-Christian writings, you can illicit from them tremendous inerrancy, a lack of contradictions, and the dabbling of a hand greater than the authors who wrote it.
3c. Thousands of years ago a savior was predicted to come and do a bunch of stuff. Two thousand years ago, hundreds of years after the predictions, a dude fulfilled the prophecies. The existance of this dude can be verified historically (via extrabiblical Roman accounts, archaeological digs, and multiple first-hand testimonies). Human meddling of text can be ruled out when evidence is inspected. This is strong evidence that the Judeo-Christian god exists, has some super-human ability to predict the future, and is able to manipulate this universe.
3d. This same god of the Jews and Christians speaks of other gods and says they are false. When inspected and compared, non-Christian gods over the past 2000 years exhibit the same traits as the false gods that the Judeo-Christian god speaks of. This leads me to believe that that one is true and the others are being driven by the same personality that's been driving all the false gods, namely Satan, as described in these phenominal historical writings which are allegedly authored not by man but by a god.
3e. This historical savior dude claims to have come from the one true God and condemns those that worship other gods. The amazing supernatural feats of this dude (for instance, his resurrection from death) can be verified historically, so this dude has some authority to say these things.
3f. If there are other gods, the god of this dude is greater than the others.

3g. The Judeo-Christian god is different from every other god in history, has more positive historical evidence for him than any other god, and can be seen changing the very face of this planet through the people living on it. Ultimately, it's a matter of faith, but belief in the Judeo-Christian god is far from a blind leap! If interested, check out a Lee Strobel book. I read that as a non-believer and found it decent (I didn't like some of his conclusions, but overall he did some decent work).

I'm sorry to spoil your fun but, no, there is no extra-biblical evidence, no positive historical evidence of Jesus nor of any miracles of his. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the myth of Jesus was an amalgam of various earlier god-man myths from other cultures. More on this.
There is zero evidence of any god, nor of any super-human capability of any kind, nor of any god that can manipulate the universe. Nor is there any evidence of a Satan being.
I seriously doubt that you've personally carried out a comparison of the non-Christian gods to unequivocally declare that they are "false gods". Nor does the bible speak of gods as Satan.
And, no, the bible is not free of contradictions, nor is inerrant. There are shelvefuls of books on the subject.

None of this belongs in this forum, inasmuch as it is at best obliquely related to Creastionism or Evolution. Trumpeting this does nothing for that debate. More on this point.

 

[Erock83]

This verse says nothing about the number of stars.



This verse says nothing clear at all.



This verse is also cryptic. It says nothing about the weight of air.

Now who is being the literalist?

One Love

 

[gluadys]

Now who is being the literalist?

One Love

That is the point really. Most so-called literalists are not consistently literalist at all. There are all sorts of things they interpret in a non-literal way, including stuff the original writer would have considered a literal description.

So why should there be any perceived problem with reading Genesis 1-2 or the story of the fall and the flood in a non-literal way? Why do some people insist that these must be literal descriptions when there is no more reason to treat them literally than a solid firmament overhead, foundations for the earth, a motionless earth, etc. All concepts which were also once held to be literal descriptions.

 

[JRNetwork]

3a. The Judeo-Christian god is written about in the world's most copied and preserved ancient literature with phenominal accuracy unparalleled in other ancient writings.
3b. If you read the Judeo-Christian writings, you can illicit from them tremendous inerrancy, a lack of contradictions, and the dabbling of a hand greater than the authors who wrote it.
3c. Thousands of years ago a savior was predicted to come and do a bunch of stuff. Two thousand years ago, hundreds of years after the predictions, a dude fulfilled the prophecies. The existance of this dude can be verified historically (via extrabiblical Roman accounts, archaeological digs, and multiple first-hand testimonies). Human meddling of text can be ruled out when evidence is inspected. This is strong evidence that the Judeo-Christian god exists, has some super-human ability to predict the future, and is able to manipulate this universe.
3d. This same god of the Jews and Christians speaks of other gods and says they are false. When inspected and compared, non-Christian gods over the past 2000 years exhibit the same traits as the false gods that the Judeo-Christian god speaks of. This leads me to believe that that one is true and the others are being driven by the same personality that's been driving all the false gods, namely Satan, as described in these phenominal historical writings which are allegedly authored not by man but by a god.
3e. This historical savior dude claims to have come from the one true God and condemns those that worship other gods. The amazing supernatural feats of this dude (for instance, his resurrection from death) can be verified historically, so this dude has some authority to say these things.
3f. If there are other gods, the god of this dude is greater than the others.

3g. The Judeo-Christian god is different from every other god in history, has more positive historical evidence for him than any other god, and can be seen changing the very face of this planet through the people living on it. Ultimately, it's a matter of faith, but belief in the Judeo-Christian god is far from a blind leap! If interested, check out a Lee Strobel book. I read that as a non-believer and found it decent (I didn't like some of his conclusions, but overall he did some decent work).

I knew the Atheists were going to have alot of fun with this.

 

[HairlessSimian]

That is the point really. Most so-called literalists are not consistently literalist at all. There are all sorts of things they interpret in a non-literal way, including stuff the original writer would have considered a literal description.

So why should there be any perceived problem with reading Genesis 1-2 or the story of the fall and the flood in a non-literal way? Why do some people insist that these must be literal descriptions when there is no more reason to treat them literally than a solid firmament overhead, foundations for the earth, a motionless earth, etc. All concepts which were also once held to be literal descriptions.

That is indeed a BIG PROBLEM.
When a text is so open to interpretation, at best there is no one "truth", at worst it's a useless source of any "truth" since there is no objective manner to decide what's what.
In contrast, scientific texts are not meant to be open to interpretation. In science, things are meant to be taken literally.

 

[FreezBee]

Yes I think we already went over that.
Creation every 6 days, there is life on other planets.
Creation only once, keep the sabbath holy only once.

The second one doesnt work, and the first one is not likely. So it is clear that the "days" are not litteral.

Why is it clear? Isn't there a week every week - if everything is created by God, the even you and I are created by God. Are we to suppose that that happened sometime in the past, but that we were so low grade that God had to wait until now, before he would put us in circulation?

What other time periods would those days be? You probably know, that while "yom" may refer to other time periods than a 24 hour literal day, when paired with an ordinal number /first day, second day, ...), it always means a 24 hour literal day.

When translating an allegory, it should be translated still with respect to linguistic rules, I'd think


- FreezBee

 

[JRNetwork]

In contrast, scientific texts are not meant to be open to interpretation. In science, things are meant to be taken literally.

You have probably heard this before, but I'll say it again; The Bible is NOT a science book. Do not attempt to read it as one.