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It is unclear to me that any part of the OT says "only the father contributes to the genetics of the child"
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It is unclear to me that any part of the OT says "only the father contributes to the genetics of the child"For instance, in the Old Testament it is assumed that only the father contributed genetically to descendants while by the time of the NT, it was known that both father and mother contribute to the genetics of children.
The "entire universe" I take you to mean the universe as depicted in the 20th-century cosmological model of about 10^20 star systems. But the Genesis account says nothing about 20th century cosmological models any more than it says anything about the modern neo-Darwinian theory of the development of life. The "earth" (eretz) can be nothing more than land, but if you take it to mean the planet, then the remaining question is what the scope of shamayim is. It could merely be the skies (troposphere) or it could mean everything visible in the night sky. The account just does not say, so modern readers interpret it according to how they suppose it is.Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense - but the chapter only gives a timeline, a time-boxed chronological sequence, for the formatting of Earth for life, all life on Earth, the creation of our sun and moon.
In Genesis 1, the Bible said, “There was evening and there was morning” at the end of each day. However, if the sun and moon were created on the fourth day, how did evenings and mornings happen during the first three days? As well, notice the order: It was not morning, then evening. Instead, it was the reverse: It was evening first, followed by morning. I believe that evening means the end of a stage -- not sunset. And morning means the beginning of another phase -- not sunrise.And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
God called the expanse “heaven.” And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
3 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
A million years for day 3 without any sun -- is not a science-affirming idea - but a 24 hour day - a single rotation. Where there is light for 12 hours (no matter the source|) -- and then night for 12 hours... does not present a science-challenge for plants and does not present a text challenge since it is consistent with the Gen 1-2:3 account as well as the Ex 20:11 summary of it.
"day" is "yom" in every case in Gen 1 - not just for day 4. In Ex 20:8-11 "for in six days the Lord made" -- day is still "yom" and applies to all the working days of the 7 day week.
"Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense" is a typical contemporary claim, not scripture. I am not in ultimate disagreement that the entire observable universe is the work of the Creator, but he might not be God the Father if Jesus is the son of the Father; he might be God the Grandfather. We simply are not told. God still retains a few profound secrets, especially about himself and what it even means ontologically to be God. Yahweh refused to tell Israel when queried on what makes him "tick" but gave a tautology in response: "I will be who i will be."Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense - but the chapter only gives a timeline, a time-boxed chronological sequence, for the formatting of Earth for life, all life on Earth, the creation of our sun and moon.
I based this on a source that I now cannot find! So I will retract it until I find the source.It is unclear to me that any part of the OT says "only the father contributes to the genetics of the child"
"Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense" is a typical contemporary claim, not scripture. I am not in ultimate disagreement that the entire observable universe is the work of the Creator, but he might not be God the Father if Jesus is the son of the Father; he might be God the Grandfather. We simply are not told. God still retains a few profound secrets, especially about himself and what it even means ontologically to be God. Yahweh refused to tell Israel when queried on what makes him "tick" but gave a tautology in response: "I will be who I will be."
The sequence given in Genesis 1 is numerical and not necessarily chronological. The sequence, except the fourth day, fits well into the modern chronological view of how life developed on earth but the usual interpretation of the fourth day simply does not fit.
Since it actually says "in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" - no limit."Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense" is a typical contemporary claim
In the Bible we have "One God" Deut 6;4 "The LORD your God is ONE" -- in Three persons Matt 28:19 "The name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit".I am not in ultimate disagreement that the entire observable universe is the work of the Creator, but he might not be God the Father if Jesus is the son of the Father; he might be God the Grandfather.
No doubt - infinite God is a concept that a finite being can never fully comprehend.. God still retains a few profound secrets, especially about himself and what it even means ontologically to be God.
He said "I AM who I AM" and when Moses asked - whom shall I say has sent Me - God said "I AM that I AM".Yahweh refused to tell Israel when queried on what makes him "tick" but gave a tautology in response: "I will be who i will be."
The sequence is a time-boxed Chronology with each time boxed unit given the time of "one day". In a sequence. That is the definition of ChronologyThe sequence given in Genesis 1 is numerical
Indeed - day four having the sun after plants is not at all what atheists/materialists/etc would have suggested.The sequence, except the fourth day, fits well into the modern chronological view of how life developed
1. A rotating planetIn Genesis 1, the Bible said, “There was evening and there was morning” at the end of each day. However, if the sun and moon were created on the fourth day, how did evenings and mornings happen during the first three days?
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning, one day.As well, notice the order: It was not morning, then evening. Instead, it was the reverse: It was evening first, followed by morning.
You have free will of course and can believe anything you wish.I believe that evening means the end of a stage -- not sunset. And morning means the beginning of another phase -- not sunrise.
Evening and morning -- one day - was never the way to say "and then 50 years later God did something else" -- not at all . That is never what we find in scriptureEven if God creates the sun 50 years or 500 years after making the plants, the light (made on first 'day' give energy to the vegetation.
You admit then -- that the language in the text in Genesis 1 and the Language in Ex 20:11 at Sinai clearly conveys 7 24 hour days (seven rotations of the spinning planet as we would say). Nothing in that text suggests to the reader that "day" (yom) is figurative since it says "SIX DAYS shall you labor for in SIX DAYs the Lord made".Moses said to the people, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” [Exodus 20:11]. But back then, could they have known that, in the context of creation, the word ‘day’ was figurative?
God tells us that humans lived for almost 1000 years -- each person -- before the flood.. Why would God rush to create at such a superfast pace? Instead, I believe He would plan out the ecology, construct the atmosphere and elements, then the landscape and fauna. With these structures in place, He placed the sun and moon in place so the earth would have day and night, then proceeded to design and make the lifeforms in the sea and on land. It is similar for people that like to work on jigsaw puzzles – do they buy an already assembled product or do they enjoy connecting the pieces?
1. A rotating planet
2. A light source on one side of the planet rather than the same light on all sides all the time.
Infinite God would have "some options" for light other than a fusion reaction 98 million miles away.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
agreed - first evening and then morning ... even on day 1.
You have free will of course and can believe anything you wish.
But exegesis is important when rendering the meaning of a given text. The author in this case is Moses and the audience is newly freed slave right out of Egypt. Where they going to engage in flights of fancy, mental gymnastics etc to wrench the text away from its obvious meaning - so that a cosmologist living 4500 years later would happy with the text?
that seems a bit far fetched to me.
Evening and morning -- one day - was never the way to say "and then 50 years later God did something else" -- not at all . That is never what we find in scripture
You admit then -- that the language in the text in Genesis 1 and the Language in Ex 20:11 at Sinai clearly conveys 7 24 hour days (seven rotations of the spinning planet as we would say). Nothing in that text suggests to the reader that "day" (yom) is figurative since it says "SIX DAYS shall you labor for in SIX DAYs the Lord made".
There is no way around this detail.
God tells us that humans lived for almost 1000 years -- each person -- before the flood.
The answer cannot be that God did now know of a way to accurately convey the idea that He took 1000 years to make plants.
The answer cannot be that God did not know of a way to accurately convey the idea that He created man instantly from dirt - directly to adult male capable of tending the garden, capable of being married -- on daHow y 1
You admit then -- that the language in the text in Genesis 1 and the Language in Ex 20:11 at Sinai clearly conveys 7 24 hour days (seven rotations of the spinning planet as we would say). Nothing in that text suggests to the reader that "day" (yom) is figurative since it says "SIX DAYS shall you labor for in SIX DAYs the Lord made".
Are you supposing that "the heavens and the earth" have no limit? What is the scope of the creation?BobRyan said:
Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense - but the chapter only gives a timeline, a time-boxed chronological sequence, for the formatting of Earth for life, all life on Earth, the creation of our sun and moon.
Since it actually says "in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" - no limit.
And the NT Confirms it.
Superlatives in the Bible are not the same in meaning as in English, which is ruled by Greek logic having what I call infinity-words not found in scripture. Words like every, all, eternity are not in scripture but are a product of translation. The first rule of Bible study is to beware of the translations!John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.
Col 1:16 for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Rev 4:11 “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
We have full agreement on this point in both OT and NT
The "one God" in Deuteronomy is Yahweh. The NT text does not say what you made it out to be saying. There is no talk of "three persons" as God; three is not one. This does not mean that Father, Son, and Spirit do not share in being God but that too much of what is theologically trinitarian doctrine is not found in the early church and is the work of syncretizing scripture with Greek philosophy - where infinity-words come from. Much of what passes as trinitarian doctrine came from church councils after they were politicized and dominated by the Bishop of Rome. The early Christians believed, as did the Druids, in a trinitarian God, but did not load it down with much of what today passes as trinitarian theology.In the Bible we have "One God" Deut 6;4 "The LORD your God is ONE" -- in Three persons Matt 28:19 "The name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit".
Find out what the word translated as eternity actually means.John 17 Jesus calls God His Father and scripture claims He existed from eternity past along with the Father.
God does not even tell us that he is infinite. That comes from Greek, not Hebrew, thinking.No doubt - infinite God is a concept that a finite being can never fully comprehend.
Yes, once we figure out what his word is.But comprehending even the tiny bit that our minds can fathom - begins with accepting Him at His Word - full acceptance.
... and the upward path when one begins to ask, have the translators got it right?Notice in Gen 3 the downward path began with "indeed - has God really said ...."?
Doubting the word of God is one thing; doubting the words of translators is another.The idea was that even the simplest statements of God , are not to be trusted , maybe we got it wrong etc. That is how it all started.
However you wish to conjugate the Hebrew verb.He said "I AM who I AM" and when Moses asked - whom shall I say has sent Me - God said "I AM that I AM".
In John 8 Jesus claims this as His own saying "Before Abraham was - I AM"
Good Greek philosophical thinking not found in Hebrew literature, including the bible. Alpha and omega are the finite beginning and ending of the Greek alphabet, and that finite aspect is Hebrew.HE is the self-existent one - Alpha and Omega - He is self-existent in all time past, present and future. Infinite God.
Yes, day is a unit of time (however much time it is intended to be in Genesis) but it is the sequencing that matters, not the time. We are not given the time of day, unless you suppose the entire presently observable Creation occurred in 6 x 24 hours!The sequence is a time-boxed Chronology with each time boxed unit given the time of "one day". In a sequence. That is the definition of Chronology
This is not accurate scriptural referencing. Phrases such as "Let the earth bring forth ..." has as its only reference to who is doing the "bring[ing] forth" are the elohim of Gen. 1:1. This word in Hebrew is male plural for god, or is gods. They are the antecedent of the plural pronoun "us" in verse 26.Then God said "let there be" and God made... and evening and morning was the nth-day
A larger discussion of The Meaning of Creation - the title of a book by Conrad Hyers - is a substantial topic - too much for this post.The heart and soul of time-boxed chronological sequencing
Indeed - day four having the sun after plants is not at all what atheists/materialists/etc would have suggested.
The idea that any part of it happens in one single "evening and morning" is not a claim made by any naturalist at all apart from the bible.
Not sure what you mean by that. Over and over again in the bible, God is called "God the Father," and Jesus calls Him "My Father." Jesus Himself is called the Son of God, not the Grandson of God.but he might not be God the Father if Jesus is the son of the Father; he might be God the Grandfather. We simply are not told.
The overall point I am making is that God tells us little to nothing about himself ontologically. When during the Exodus, the Israelites asked Yahweh for his name, to us that would merely be a label, but in most of history, from about a couple of centuries ago back, a name meant the essential characteristics and not merely a designator. When Yahweh gives Adam the task of naming the animals, it is not a mere linguistic labeling activity. Israel was wanting to know the inner workings of Yahweh, how he functioned, so that they could use him for their purposes. His response, in effect, was "It's none of your business."Not sure what you mean by that. Over and over again in the bible, God is called "God the Father," and Jesus calls Him "My Father." Jesus Himself is called the Son of God, not the Grandson of God.
I don't look on God saying in Exodus "I am that I am" as meaning, "It's none of your business," as you suggest. Rather, He is pointing to His eternal nature. We are bound by time, so we say things such as, "I was......", "I became.....", and "One day I will be......" Also, your post seems to cover something I didn't mention in my post to which you were replying. I wrote about what you had said about God the Father possibly being "grandfather" to Jesus Christ. I pointed to the numerous places in Scripture where God is called "God the Father," Jesus calls Him "My Father," and Jesus is called "the Son of God," not the grandson of God.The overall point I am making is that God tells us little to nothing about himself ontologically. When during the Exodus, the Israelites asked Yahweh for his name, to us that would merely be a label, but in most of history, from about a couple of centuries ago back, a name meant the essential characteristics and not merely a designator. When Yahweh gives Adam the task of naming the animals, it is not a mere linguistic labeling activity. Israel was wanting to know the inner workings of Yahweh, how he functioned, so that they could use him for their purposes. His response, in effect, was "It's none of your business."
Now, my further point is that the scope of God's revelation of himself is also in this category. There could be more to God than we have either imagined or been told. This is why the kind of Greek philosophical musings in the later (from the latter-400s AD onwards) church councils found them no longer attended by most of European and Mideast Christendom, who were called heretics by Rome because they refused to syncretize scriptural teaching with pagan ideas and ways of thinking. Much of the consequent development of trinitarian doctrine by the Western, Rome-dominated churches was formulated on the basis of Greek philosophical thinking prevalent in the West and not the kind of observationally-oriented, finite thinking of Hebrew culture. The early church (and their forerunners, the Druids, of the patriarchal tradition of Abraham, Melchizedek, Noah) did have a triad structure to their understanding of God; hints of it occur in the Bible. But they did not spin an elaborate theoretical doctrine largely devoid of scriptural support and heavily dependent on Greek reasoning. The Reformation did not really root out this pagan accommodation and we are stuck with it to this day though few Good Christians recognize that it is even there.
One of the telltale signs of this is the common use by translators of words having no bounds to them - what I call infinity-words, beginning with superlatives. To illustrate, in the plagues in Egypt, all the cattle die in one plague only to have boils in the next. (Some atheists use this to show how the Bible is inconsistent.) In English, superlatives such as all have a Greek logical meaning of "without exception" whereas in Hebrew thinking, it means "the preponderance of" - a statistical and not logical way of using superlatives. This analysis can be extended to words involving infinite time such as forever, ever, eternity, and eternal. The literal Hebrew has finite meanings that the translators have replaced with infinity-words. This cavalier reference to infinity in theology - especially in trying to "know God's name" is the point I am making.
What do you mean, that God hates the word "ontologically"? If so, why? I may be wrong, because "ontologically" is not a word I use very often, but I think it means "connected with the meaning of existence." Why would God the Creator hate that? But perhaps you meant something else.The Creator hates this:
Good, I hope, to notice,. it looks like a "scholars" word, which carries with it a curse. God hides truth from 'scholars', even about salvation! This is His Good Pleasure so to do.What do you mean, that God hates the word "ontologically"? If so, why? I may be wrong, because "ontologically" is not a word I use very often, but I think it means "connected with the meaning of existence." Why would God the Creator hate that? But perhaps you meant something else.
Are you thinking about this verse?:Good, I hope, to notice,. it looks like a "scholars" word, which carries with it a curse. God hides truth from 'scholars', even about salvation! This is His Good Pleasure so to do.
I do not know the extent of your paleo-Hebrew language skills; I am not a Hebrew scholar. However, others who know more than I have commented on the verb conjugation in that sentence in Exodus and suggest that a closer rendering is "I will be who I will be." So unless you can provide a more ample description of the Hebrew grammar involved, this question remains unresolved. Despite that, the content of the statement is that of a simple tautology. As baseball players who lost say in interviews,"It is what it is." What does that mean? They have nothing more to say about the matter. And Yahweh had nothing more to say to Israel about his ontological nature.I don't look on God saying in Exodus "I am that I am" as meaning, "It's none of your business," as you suggest. Rather, He is pointing to His eternal nature. We are bound by time, so we say things such as, "I was......", "I became.....", and "One day I will be......" Also, your post seems to cover something I didn't mention in my post to which you were replying. I wrote about what you had said about God the Father possibly being "grandfather" to Jesus Christ. I pointed to the numerous places in Scripture where God is called "God the Father," Jesus calls Him "My Father," and Jesus is called "the Son of God," not the grandson of God.
"Gen 1:1 makes God the creator of the entire universe in its broadest sense" is a typical contemporary claim, not scripture. I am not in ultimate disagreement that the entire observable universe is the work of the Creator, but he might not be God the Father if Jesus is the son of the Father; he might be God the Grandfather. We simply are not told. God still retains a few profound secrets, especially about himself and what it even means ontologically to be God. Yahweh refused to tell Israel when queried on what makes him "tick" but gave a tautology in response: "I will be who I will be."
The sequence given in Genesis 1 is numerical and not necessarily chronological. The sequence, except the fourth day, fits well into the modern chronological view of how life developed on earth but the usual interpretation of the fourth day simply does not fit.
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