Bible literalism.

[hedrick]

I'm curious. I've seen you make this argument a number of times. Would you say that Irenaeus's approach to the fall, that it was part of the spiritual education of a spiritually immature humanity, might fit an evolutionary approach better than Augustine's?

I've spent a few minutes looking at a couple of sections from Irenaeus, and comments on it. I guess so. He seems to see imperfection as inevitable for a created being, which seems right. I believe he also sees Jesus as coming to bring us something better, which I'd also agree with.

However there are differences. He sees sin as an imperfection, resulting from having been created. And I think he sees death as a result. I would say sin is a side-effect of one of our strengths, the ability to learn through experience. I'd also say mortality is inherent in the technology with which we're implemented, and is not the result of a fall. A more spiritually mature human still wouldn't be immortal. I'm not sure how much the difference affects the overall scheme though, since I'm not an expert on Irenaeus' concepts of sin and salvation.

 

[BobRyan]

I've spent a few minutes looking at a couple of sections from Irenaeus, and comments on it. I guess so. He seems to see imperfection as inevitable for a created being, which seems right. .

Seems wrong if we note that only 1/3 of the angels fell. Using that theory above - they all fell.

 

[BobRyan]

But since there's no consensus of historians on this subject I'm going to say that history doesn't give us a judgement.

History is what the majority of historians say it is... which is the telling of it. And the telling of it differs at times from actual history.

 

[Jamsie]

but one of those sources is mixed in with the ever-changing-guesswork of man, and the other is "the Word of God"

That is the strength of science as new information is discovered details are better informed. Do you really believe that the incredible mounds of evidence for an old earth or the age of the universe will be changed? (Of course if our natural world is filled with "fiction" then how would we know) Always making it out as a competition, where none exists (a confusion in metaphysics) serves little purpose. One might also strongly suggest that Biblical interpretation is infused with "ever-changing-guesswork"!) As noted best to not be so dogmatic...

 

[BobRyan]

That is the strength of science as new information is discovered details are better informed.

Indeed - no matter how goofy the current science is on a point.. if new data comes along and it can be "slightly less goofy" tomorrow - and if a majority of scientists will sign up for it -- then eventually... given enough time... with a lot of convincing... the science on that point will be updated.

Do you really believe that the incredible mounds of evidence for an old earth or the age of the universe will be changed?

Do you really believe that the incredibly mounds of evidence for young life on Earth will change? Are the diamonds all going to lose all their C14 tomorrow??

"if all the atoms making up the entire earth were radiocarbon, then after only 1 million years absolutely no carbon-14 atoms should be left!
... AMS instruments need to be checked occasionally, to make sure they aren’t also “reading” any laboratory contamination, called background. So rock samples that should read zero are occasionally placed into the instruments to test their accuracy. What better samples to use than fossils, coals, and limestones, which are supposed to be millions of years old and should have no radiocarbon?

Radiocarbon Found!
Imagine the surprise when every piece of “ancient” carbon tested has contained measurable quantities of radiocarbon!4 Fossils, coal, oil, natural gas, limestone, marble, and graphite from every Flood-related rock layer—and even some pre-Flood deposits—have all contained measurable quantities of radiocarbon (Figure 2). All these results have been reported in the conventional scientific literature."

Carbon-14 in Fossils and Diamonds

====================================

One might also strongly suggest that Biblical interpretation is infused with "ever-changing-guesswork"!) .

I point to legal code in Ex 20:11 and historic record of Gen 2:1-3 reporting the exact same fact... -- not an "ever changing one".

 

[dms1972]

I cannot understand how if we take it entirely literally, the first three days were ordinary days with morning and evening, when the sun was not made until the fourth day?. That makes me wonder if perhaps its poetic, or mythopoeic langauge. Luther said most of the meaning is beyond us now, about the only things on which there is agreement amongst theologians is that there was a beginning and it was created by God out of nothing.

Augustine apparently thought the world was made on a sudden all at once and was and not successively over six days, and that the days were mystical days of knowledge of in the angels and not natural days.

 

[BobRyan]

I cannot understand how if we take it entirely literally, the first three days were ordinary days with morning and evening, when the sun was not made until the fourth day?. That makes me think perhaps its poetic.

The Earth "was formless and void" and "darkness covered the surface of the deep" -- that is the "starting conditions" ..

it does not say "And earth did not exist"
it does not say "and the earth was not rotating on its axis"

On day 1 - we have light and the text says that results in that one rotation of Earth having evening and morning. So then clearly whatever the "source" of that light... it was only on one side of the rotating Earth.

Now I think you are saying that you cannot understand how God Himself could possibly know about, or provide -- ANY light source at all for Earth - OTHER than a fusion reaction 93 million miles from Earth prior to day 4 -- is that right? That is your assumption? And your argument is that since the limit set upon God is so-situated it is reasonable to downsize His word in favor of that arbitrary limit setup upon Him. Given that God is limited-in-just-that-way then nothing in the text can be accepted as actually true in its details so then "make it poetry"???

That is the whole argument for not accepting it?? Seriously?

Who put such a limit on God to result in that downgrade of His own historic account of His own work?

 

[Radagast]

Well my student friend must have been referring to some more recent understanding of the phenomena he was studying at the time. I have never researched this, it was a passing comment

Your student friend may have been wrong. You may have misunderstood him. You may have misremembered the episode (which was a long time ago).

 

[BobRyan]

Augustine apparently thought the world was made on a sudden all at once and was and not successively over six days, .

Indeed - and he claimed that he knew his making-stuff-up idea did not at all fit the text -- and yet he still valued his own ability to out-think God as a higher form of knowledge and merely hoped someone might come along later and "fix the text" in some way to fit better with his own divine thinking.

===================


In The City of God, Augustine also defended the idea of a young Earth. Augustine rejected both the immortality of the human race proposed by pagans, and contemporary ideas of ages (such as those of certain Greeks and Egyptians) that differed from the Church's sacred writings:

Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been... They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.[20]

Augustine, Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past, The City of God, Book 12: Chapt. 10 [AD 419]

=====================

Augustine did not get his wild "everything all at once" idea from the Genesis text -- clearly it was from

"He reads Sirach 18:1 to teach that God creates everything all at once"

Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past,

 

[dms1972]

The Earth "was formless and void" and "darkness covered the surface of the deep" -- that is the "starting conditions" ..

it does not say "And earth did not exist"
it does not say "and the earth was not rotating on its axis"

On day 1 - we have light and the text says that results in that one rotation of Earth having evening and morning. So then clearly whatever the "source" of that light... it was only on one side of the rotating Earth.

Now I think you are saying that you cannot understand how God Himself could possibly know about, or provide -- ANY light source at all for Earth - OTHER than a fusion reaction 93 million miles from Earth prior to day 4 -- is that right? That is your assumption? And your argument is that since the limit set upon God is so-situated it is reasonable to downsize His word in favor of that arbitrary limit setup upon Him. Given that God is limited-in-just-that-way then nothing in the text can be accepted as actually true in its details so then "make it poetry"???

That is the whole argument for not accepting it?? Seriously?

Who put such a limit on God to result in that downgrade of His own historic account of His own work?

I am asking questions about it to see what is the best way to ascertain the sort of literature it is and therefore how to read it.

 

[Radagast]

Indeed - and he claimed that he knew his making-stuff-up idea did not at all fit the text -- and yet he still valued his own ability to out-think God as a higher form of knowledge and merely hoped someone might come along later and "fix the text" in some way to fit better with his own divine thinking.

If you are tempted to make an accusation like that, you need to back it up with a quote, or remain silent.

 

[dms1972]

Indeed - and he claimed that he knew his making-stuff-up idea did not at all fit the text -- and yet he still valued his own ability to out-think God as a higher form of knowledge and merely hoped someone might come along later and "fix the text" in some way to fit better with his own divine thinking.

===================


In The City of God, Augustine also defended the idea of a young Earth. Augustine rejected both the immortality of the human race proposed by pagans, and contemporary ideas of ages (such as those of certain Greeks and Egyptians) that differed from the Church's sacred writings:

Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been... They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.[20]

Augustine, Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past, The City of God, Book 12: Chapt. 10 [AD 419]

=====================

Augustine did not get his wild "everything all at once" idea from the Genesis text -- clearly it was from

"He reads Sirach 18:1 to teach that God creates everything all at once"

Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past,

So did the sun then come into being roughly six thousand years ago also?

 

[hedrick]

I am asking questions about it to see what is the best way to ascertain the sort of literature it is and therefore how to read it.

Maybe the same kind of literature as other stories such as the Enuma Elish, although the content is different. However there are many scholars who think Genesis is a specific attack on those contemporary accounts. See Genesis 1-2 as Polemic - Dr. Michael Heiser for a summary. This would make it polemic literature, or perhaps anti-mythology.

 

[Radagast]

I cannot understand how if we take it entirely literally, the first three days were ordinary days with morning and evening, when the sun was not made until the fourth day?

Augustine points out (in De Genesis ad Litteram) that they cannot have been ordinary days as we understand them.

Augustine apparently thought the world was made on a sudden all at once and was and not successively over six days, and that the days were mystical days of knowledge of in the angels and not natural days.

That's not quite how I understand him.

 

[coffee4u]

That is the strength of science as new information is discovered details are better informed. Do you really believe that the incredible mounds of evidence for an old earth or the age of the universe will be changed? (Of course if our natural world is filled with "fiction" then how would we know) Always making it out as a competition, where none exists (a confusion in metaphysics) serves little purpose. One might also strongly suggest that Biblical interpretation is infused with "ever-changing-guesswork"!) As noted best to not be so dogmatic...

I believe it is completely wrong.
The 'facts' are based on things that cannot be measured. 1) it was made outside of time and 2) it was a supernatural event. Both are things that science cannot know.

Sciences changes the Bible remains the same.
Exodus 20:11
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.

 

[BobRyan]

I am asking questions about it to see what is the best way to ascertain the sort of literature it is and therefore how to read it.

ahhh yes - "the kind of literature" it is.


We might all agree that atheists often don't mind "admitting" to what the Bible says - they simply reject what it says. As in rejecting the virgin birth, the bodily ascension of Christ, the miracles of the bible and in this example they freely admit to what the Bible says - while rejecting it as 'truth'.


Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:


‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

===================================================
In the above example - the statement is made that the experts on the Hebrew language and OT text at all world-class university - have no doubt at all that the text in Genesis is given as a historic account. They "just don't believe" the account. But when it comes to "the kind of literature that it is" they all agree - it was written for the audience to accept as a historic account.

So that gets the "expert" answer on "the kind of literature that it is" -- and do atheists accept that historic account as being "accurate"? Well "no" of course.

 

[Radagast]

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:


‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

Really? You can provide a reference to a book where Barr says this?

 

[hedrick]

Really? You can provide a reference to a book where Barr says this?

Oxford Hebraist James Barr: Genesis means what it says! - creation.com

Note that it’s private correspondence, and he died in 2006, so you can’t check it. But I would assume he’s right. He’s just saying it’s not symbolic or allegorical. He certainly doesn’t think it’s historically accurate.

 

[BobRyan]

Really? You can provide a reference to a book where Barr says this?

It's from a from Barr letter to David C.C. Watson, 23 April 1984.

 

[BobRyan]

Oxford Hebraist James Barr: Genesis means what it says! - creation.com

Note that it’s private correspondence, and he died in 2006, so you can’t check it. But I would assume he’s right. He’s just saying it’s not symbolic or allegorical. He certainly doesn’t think it’s historically accurate.

Exactly - he answers the question about "what KIND of literature" it is -- but he is not an actual believer in the Genesis historic account..

For Christians the fact that scripture is the "Word of God" and that the text in question is "historic account" rather than "poetry not intended to be taken literally" -- is a big deal.

And the wild suggestion that Hebrew slaves newly released from Egypt were certainly going to take that sort of language as we find in the Genesis text and "insert darwinism into it" via extreme inference .. --- is not being taken seriously by the scholars of OT history and Hebrew language studies in world class universities.