Quick question

[Beastt]

Leviticus 14: 1-9 does not claim to cure leprosy. It is a ritual of atonement, not of healing. That is very clear if you read it.

"The Lord said to Moses, "These are the regulations for the diseased person at the time of his ceremonial cleansing, , when he is brought to the priset. The priest is to go outside the camp and examine him. If the person has been healed of his infectious skin disease, the priest shall order that two live clean birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop be brought for the one to be cleansed. Then the priest shall order that one of the birds be killed over fresh water in a clay pot. He is then to take the live bird and dip it, together with the cedar wood, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, into the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. Seven times he shall sprinkle the one to be cleansed of the infectious disease and pronounce him clean. Then he is to release the live bird in the open fields. The person to be cleansed must wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, he must shave his head, his beard, his eyebrows and the rest of his hair. He must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water, and he will be clean."

Note - The person must already present evidence that he is cured BEFORE this process begins.
They do not say, "then he will be healed." They say, "Then he will be clean."

This is NOT even prssented as a cure for the disease.

I do thank you for your post. Your post is a wonderful example of the errors that the vast majority of people who say the bible is wrong make. They "misread" or they jump to conclusions.

Try using one of the less white-washed versions of the Bible;

KJV (Leviticus 14:1-9)

(1) And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (2) This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest: (3) And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper; (4) Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop: (5) And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water: (6) As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water: (7) And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field. (8) And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days. (9) But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off: and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean.​

So there you go; Moses proclaiming to the people that this is how to cure leprosy and that he got it directly from God. The only problem is that, of course, it doesn't work. I suspect it might be a very good method of spreading bird flu, though. So as the Bible continues to be changed and altered in an attempt to keep it from exposing itself against the discoveries of science, it was obviously decided to take this healing ritual in the KJV and turn it into a "ceremonial" ritual in the newer versions. But the KJV and those preceeding it never say it's a ceremonial ritual. They claim it's a cure for leprosy.

If you look closely at the version you've provided, you can see that it doesn't even make sense. Firstly it proclaims that the infection must already be healed, "If the person has been healed of his infectious skin disease". Then later it says, "Seven times he shall sprinkle the one to be cleansed of the infectious disease and pronounce him clean." That's rather pointless if he's already been healed of the infectious disease.

 

[Becky153]

Try using one of the less white-washed versions of the Bible;

KJV (Leviticus 14:1-9)

(1) And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (2) This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest: (3) And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper; (4) Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop: (5) And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water: (6) As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water: (7) And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field. (8) And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days. (9) But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off: and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean.​

So there you go; Moses proclaiming to the people that this is how to cure leprosy and that he got it directly from God. The only problem is that, of course, it doesn't work. I suspect it might be a very good method of spreading bird flu, though. So as the Bible continues to be changed and altered in an attempt to keep it from exposing itself against the discoveries of science, it was obviously decided to take this "medical practice" in the KJV and turn it into a "ceremonial" ritual in the newer versions. But the KJV and those preceeding it never say it's a ceremonial ritual. They claim it's a cure for leprosy.

If you look closely at the version you've provided, you can see that it doesn't even make sense. Firstly it proclaims that the infection must already be healed, "If the person has been healed of his infectious skin disease". Then later it says, "Seven times he shall sprinkle the one to be cleansed of the infectious disease and pronounce him clean." That's rather pointless if he's already been healed of the infectious disease.

The ESV also says leprosy; however, I believe that now that Christ has come and made a new covenant, therefore making it so that it does not work anymore. Your last point does make sense that it makes no sense. (if you got that lol)

 

[Ryal Kane]

Yes, but John, if God used Adam's DNA then Eve would have been a man. Not to mention that God apparently didn't need to go digging into any human bodies to get Adam's DNA. Since he poofed that up out of the dust, why not do the same for Eve?

That always bugged me too. Here's a deity that created the ENTIRE UNIVERSE from nothing in the last five days but when it comes to Eve, he has to use preexisting material. It has the ring of standard creation mythology to me.

 

[Beastt]

That always bugged me too. Here's a deity that created the ENTIRE UNIVERSE from nothing in the last five days but when it comes to Eve, he has to use preexisting material. It has the ring of standard creation mythology to me.

Much like all the work the Bible claims God went to so that he wouldn't need to re-create the animals. He didn't seem to have much trouble creating them the first time, as would be expected of omnipotence. But for some reason, he felt the need to go through the entire Noah's Ark debacle to keep from having to create them again.

 

[Beastt]

The ESV also says leprosy; however, I believe that now that Christ has come and made a new covenant, therefore making it so that it does not work anymore. Your last point does make sense that it makes no sense. (if you got that lol)

I appreciate your openness and honesty. It's a trait that speaks very well of your character.

Historically leprosy was thought to have been caused by sin, (like so many other negative things in human life). It wasn't until 1873 that mycobacterium leprae was finally isolated and identified as the cause. Certainly true leprosy has always had the same cause which God, (assuming he exists), would certainly know. But the men who wrote the Bible had no clue about microbes so they applied whatever superstition they could conjur up to explain the things they didn't understand. That's likely why they felt that a priest undergoing some superstitious ritual might cleanse the patient of his sins and thusly, the disease. They figured if it was caused by sin, then the sinner needed to be cleansed. So Moses steps forward and offers something he claims is from God but is obviously a cleansing ritual rather than any sort of treatment for a disease caused by bacteria. Moses didn't know anything about bacteria and clearly God didn't fill him in. (In the Bible, Moses has quite a habit of making claims concerning messages from God which have since fallen to science.)

As for the claim that this ritual was a follow-up for after a person was cured of leprosy, that doesn't seem to make much sense since leprosy was considered incurable until the early 20th century and even those treatment methods were spotty. A proper MDT (multi-drug therapy) for leprosy wasn't available until the 1970s.

 

[gluadys]

As for the claim that this ritual was a follow-up for after a person was cured of leprosy, that doesn't seem to make much sense since leprosy was considered incurable until the early 20th century and even those treatment methods were spotty. A proper MDT (multi-drug therapy) for leprosy wasn't available until the 1970s.

Actually it does make sense. The leper (or person with a skin disease) was an outcast from the community because the disease was associated with sin.

It was not enough to be healed of the symptoms in the skin. The community had to know that the victim's sin was also atoned for. Hence the cleansing ritual for someone who had been healed. Although it uses birds instead of goats, it is very similar to the annual scapegoat ceremony for the cleansing of the sins of the whole community.

In this case, a similar ceremony is used to restore the former outcast to his/her place in the community. The point of the ritual is not to heal but to recognize publicly that healing has taken place and the one shunned is no longer to be shunned.

 

[Soul Searcher]

hmm.. wondering what this has to do with dinosaurs on the ark.

 

[Beastt]

hmm.. wondering what this has to do with dinosaurs on the ark.

If I recall correctly, it has to do with a flood that never happened, meaning a misrepresentation in the Bible, a claim that there aren't any misrepresentations in the Bible and the leprosy cure of Moses being offered as another example.

But you're right... when trains get that far off track, things start to get very messy, very quickly. So to put things back on the rails; obviously there weren't any dinosaurs on the ark because the ark never existed, the flood never happened, and dinosaurs died out long before evolution brought the first human to into existence.

 

[Soul Searcher]

Any Dragons on the ark?

Can anyone explain the problem with the Cougar and the deer I mentioned earlier?

 

[gluadys]

Now, I happen to be a creationist in that I believe God created the heavens and the earth. I happen to be an anti-evolutionist because I think they will absolutely never prove marco-evolution-species-leaps and because eventual evolution gets to primordial soup and I don't believe in that.

However - the theory of evolution would NOT be invalidated by this account in Genesis, and given the lack of education of the writer's of Genesis at the time of the writing - it is an AMAZINGLY accurate bit of information in regards to what we now know.

You know, you are very good at explaining the biblical text. You should take time to let someone properly explain evolution to you. "marco-evolution-species-leaps" have no place in actual scientific evolutionary theory.

There is no reason you should believe what is not so. That includes getting rid of false ideas about evolution. Making leaps is not what evolution does.

 

[Beastt]

It was not enough to be healed of the symptoms in the skin.

Which, if it were true leprosy, wouldn't have happened in the first place.

 

[Beastt]

Any Dragons on the ark?

Two komodo dragons had reservations for first class cabins on the promenade deck but they missed the boat after being detained in the boarding terminal by an over-zealous security guard reacting to a malfunctioning metal detector.

Fortunately, this wasn't a problem since the rains only lasted 12-minutes and didn't produce enough moisture to even clean the windshield on Moses' new Mercedes. He was laughed out of the community for building a leaky boat with no water in sight and had to move away and start a new life as a shoe salesman in Chicago.

Can anyone explain the problem with the Cougar and the deer I mentioned earlier?

(Alternate ending...)

When you think about it, that's only a small problem.

Small, that is, when compared to the bigger problem of having nothing for any of the animals to eat. Almost 6-months under salt water left the entire planet pretty much devoid of any kind of vegetation. (There is enough salt in the oceans to cover the entire planet with salt to a depth of 140-feet.) None of the animals had anything to eat and they all died out. The land was so saturated with salt that none of the previously existing plants were able to grow which is why the Earth today is as dry, desolate and dead as the moon.

(Oops!)

 

[gluadys]

Which, if it were true leprosy, wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Right. The biblical term applies to many skin diseases. There is even a reference to a house having "leprosy" and needing to be cleansed.

 

[Beastt]

Right. The biblical term applies to many skin diseases. There is even a reference to a house having "leprosy" and needing to be cleansed.

Scriptural evidence of God's inability as a diagnostician?

 

[iamaprincess]

i have a quick question and iam not to sure where to put it.. i was just wondering what people think about being born again? I would love to hear what people think about this and or have experienced this.

 

[Micaiah]

It is not unreasonable to expect that only young animals were taken on board, especially in the larger animals.

There would have been some variation within kinds after the flood and before the dinosaurs became extinct so that the number of kinds taken on board would be less than all the variations present within the fossil record.

You can see a more detailed discussion on the topic here:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3672/

Woodmorappe estimates that there were about 8000 genera of animals taken on board and 668 of those were dinosaurs.

 

[Jet Black]

Any Dragons on the ark?

yes, fire breathing dragons, and wood boring termites to boot.

 

[Beastt]

It is not unreasonable to expect that only young animals were taken on board, especially in the larger animals.

One might expect that sexually mature animals would be a better choice if it was expected that they would repopulate the Earth.

There would have been some variation within kinds after the flood and before the dinosaurs became extinct so that the number of kinds taken on board would be less than all the variations present within the fossil record.

How do you have variation in the "kinds" without knowing specifically what constitutes a "kind"?

You can see a more detailed discussion on the topic here:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3672/

Woodmorappe estimates that there were about 8000 genera of animals taken on board and 668 of those were dinosaurs.

Odd then that dinosaur fossils never seem to be found in the proper strata for any time period remotely resembling the supposed time of the flood.

And it's a good thing they didn't take any dinosaurs or any other animals aboard the ark because they would most certainly have died when it sank. You can't build a 500-foot long boat out of wood and make it sea-worthy. Ship builders have known this for decades. Once you get into the area of 300-feet or larger, the wooden planks simply lack the rigidity necessary to preserve a water-tight seal. The wood flexes and allows water in too fast to leave the vessel afloat for long.

Too little water before the flood. Too little water after the flood. No way to reconcile the insufficient water without God just zapping up a bunch more water and then zapping it away again later. If everything except the animals on the ark died, then we'd have a strata so amazingly rich in fossil remains there could be little doubt of a catastrophe such as the proposed flood. The same would be true of a monsterous sediment layer. Neither of these exist. What about the fish? Did Noah have aquariums on board that would make researchers at Sea World drool? It's easy to see how biblical authors would assume that fish would be fine because fish swim in water. But they lacked an understanding of the environmental needs for the various types of aquatic life. Such a flood would likely kill everything that swims. No matter what you do, what you propose or what you might want to believe, the Noah's Ark story is as full of holes as a 500-foot boat made of wood.

 

[Jet Black]

You can see a more detailed discussion on the topic here:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3672/

woodmorappe (Jan Penzeckis to use his real name) uses the median statistic, but the median statistic is useless in this kind of context.

To find the median, you make a list of all your elements of your list and put them in the oder of the thing you want to find the median of. for example height order, amount of money in pockets, mass or volume. Then you take the middle one, and that is your median (if you have an even number, the median is the average of the two middle numbers), so for example the median of

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10,000,000,000,000,000,000

is 1.

There are two averages, the mode and the mean. However Woodmorappe's calculation does not use these.

If you take a rat, a dog and an elephant, and try to work out the size of a vessel you need to accommodate the three, the median is the size of the dog. that mean that you need three dog-volumes to house a rat, a dog and an elephant. You could fit three dogs in the cab of a pickup truck extremely easily, but one elephant weighs as much as six pickup trucks, and definitely will not fit in the cab.

 

[JohnR7]

and thereby read other than the words held in the Bible.

This is just not true. There are very standard rules for Bible interpretation that we learn in Bible school. As I say again and again, the very first rule is you have to look at who the Bible was origionally written for, then and only then can you examine what the message is for us today.

I'm not surprised that you don't see a conflict. If you did, you'd either be in the YEC camp, or you'd perhaps be seeing the Bible as only an account of cultural beliefs and ancient tales.

The Bible tells us that we do not need anyone to teach us the Bible. When I first started to read the Bible I read it on my own and I did not allow any individual denomination to interpret the Bible for me. I just allowed the Holy Spirit to guide me and teach me. So I do not need anyone to tell me what the Bible says. Of course it is always of interest to me what God is showing others. As long as I get a first hand account. So, if I want to know what God told John Calvan, then I will go to Calvan, I will not go to a third party to tell me what he things God showed Calvan. Even in the Methodist church your better off to read John Wesleys sermons for yourself and not go by other peoples impressions of them. For some reason they seem to come up with a different opinion of what he preached then what my interpretation is of his teaching. For example, I think he taught a LOT more on holyness, that other people seem to want to acknowledge.

many things are claimed in the Bible which aren't true.

The Bible is truth, Jesus is the way, truth and eternal life. If this were not true, then there would be no reason for me to be here having this conversation.

Again, this may be how you wish to read the book

Again, it is not how I read the Book. No scripture is of private interpretation, their are rules that we follow.

2 Peter 1:20-21
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. [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.

If you change the text to say something other than what it originally said, then you've distorted the original. And this kind of thing happens with every new version.

I attended a KJV ONLY Bible school. But in sunday school teachers class we were told that other translations of the Bible could be used as a Bible commentary but we needed to be careful not to give them the same authority we give the KJV.

For me the King James version is the best translation for the origional language, but I personally do not give it the same authority that I give the origional language.