[_ Old Earth _] Creation-six days or seven?

[Quath]

LOL, the rest was symbolic and done for us to model. We need the pest, not Him. :D

Now was this a Freudian slip directed at me. ;)

Quath

 

[Vic C.]

LOL, the rest was symbolic and done for us to model. We need the pest, not Him. :D

Now was this a Freudian slip directed at me. ;)

Quath

Hahahaha! You're no pest!

rest

 

[Christ Michael]

Hmmm... lets see. God created everything in six/24 hour days, and on the sixth day he created Adam. How long ago was that? Anyone knows?




Cheers

 

[reznwerks]

6 days

You guys really believe the earth was created in 6 days? There is light that is just reaching our telescopes now that has travelled millions of light years to get here. Light travels at 186,000 miles a second so do the math for one year and multiply it by a few million. Thats a lot of zeros! Any of you take any science classes or do you prefer to ignore what is in front of you for what your imagination can conjur up?

 

[Featherbop]

You have to come up with a better arguement than that to show the earth wasn't created in six days. The light is not the earth. You can't say that because light is assumed to have traveled millions of years,(or whatever scientists say this week), that the earth was created a long period of time ago.

 

[Arnold Philips]

If you want to be successful as a religion, you have to coopt aspects of other religions. In this case, the Hebrews used the Enuma Elish creation story, which was the popular creation story for that region, and then changed a little bit. The Genesis story is pretty much identical, except that God rested on the seventh day because He was tired. In the Enuma Elish, man was created in order that the creator gods could rest, meaning man was made as servants to the gods. The theological importance is that the Hebrews saw themselves as made in God's image, whereas those who believed in the Enuma Elish account saw themselves as servants to the gods.

 

[Quath]

In this case, the Hebrews used the Enuma Elish creation story, which was the popular creation story for that region, and then changed a little bit.

I was looking at http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch01.htm and saw the following that kind of echo this. It about the Sumerian influence on Judiasm.

Clinging to their belief in the goodness and power of their gods and wondering about their sin and the toil and strife with which they lived, the Sumerians imagined a past in which people lived in a god-created paradise. This was expressed in the same poetic tale that described the conflict between the king of Uruk and the distant town of Arrata -- the earliest known description in writing of a paradise and the fall of humankind. The poem describes a period when there were no creatures that threatened people -- no snakes, scorpions, hyenas, or lions -- a period in which humans knew no terror. There was no confusion among various peoples speaking different languages, with everyone praising the god Enlil in one language. Then, according to the poem, something happened that enraged the god Enki (the god of wisdom and water who had organized the earth in accordance with a general plan laid down by Enlil). The clay tablet on which the poem was written is damaged at this point, but the tablet indicates that Enki found some sort of inappropriate behavior among humans. Enki decided to put an end to the golden age, and in the place of the golden age came conflict, wars and a confusion of languages.

On another clay tablet, surviving fragments of a poem describe the gods as having decided that humans were evil and the gods as having created a flood "to destroy the seed of humanity," a flood that raged for seven days and seven nights. The tablet describes a huge boat commanded by a king named Ziusudra, who was preserving vegetation and the seed of humankind. His boat was "tossed about by the windstorms on the great waters." When the storm subsided, the god Utu -- the sun -- came forward and shed light on heaven and earth. The good king Ziusudra opened a window on the boat and let in light from Utu. Then Ziusudra prostrated himself before Utu and sacrificed an ox and a sheep for the god.

Quath