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[_ Old Earth _] Is evolutionism compatible with the Bible?

civilwarbuff said:
Not because God told them that......
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Just as YE creationist believe that Genesis is a literal history, but not because God told them that.

Nevertheless, if there were YE creationists in those times, they'd be declaring that you had to believe the sky was an inverted bowl with windows in it.
 
Barbarian said:
Just as YE creationist believe that Genesis is a literal history, but not because God told them that.
Nevertheless, if there were YE creationists in those times, they'd be declaring that you had to believe the sky was an inverted bowl with windows in it.
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I don't think so. The Hebrews were well aware of the heavens from Genesis 1:1, Genesis 7:11, Exodus 32:13, and Nehemiah 9:6. Paul speaks of the 3rd heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.
Feeling a bit mortified?
 
civilwarbuff said:
I don't think so. The Hebrews were well aware of the heavens from Genesis 1:1, Genesis 7:11, Exodus 32:13, and Nehemiah 9:6. Paul speaks of the 3rd heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.
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You've compressed several thousand years here. By Paul's time, every educated person in the area knew that the Earth was round. However, the Hebrew word for sky:
•raqia: extended (solid) surface, vault of heaven supporting waters above, firmament, dome, vault. The etymology is of something like brass, beaten out into a solid sheet. A sort of great inverted bowl.

Presupposed a solid dome supporting waters of the "firmament" which fell as rain when windows in the dome opened. Hence the Genesis:
In translating raqia we confront a different but equally difficult challenge. What the word still meant when Tyndale was deciding how to render it in English was a rigid (probably metallic) dome-of-heaven, which surrounded and protected us. He thought the sun and the moon to be embedded in the firmament along with the “fixed” stars, and that the whole assemblage rotated around an axis that pointed toward the North Star. We no longer believe that to be the case. In fact, we don’t believe there ever was a “firmament.” Faced with this situation today, translators have gone in two directions. One group, unwilling to translate the Hebrew as it reads, has translated raqia as “expanse,” fully aware that the average reader will interpret “expanse” as “atmospheric expanse” (which does exist but which the Hebrew does not support at all). The other group of translators has translated raqia “dome” or “vault,” not worrying about the fact that space exploration has found no evidence of such an entity.
http://spectrummagazine.org/article...-account-six-hebrew-words-make-all-difference

Hence the flood story...
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood gates of heaven were opened: 12 And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Now there is no great bowl forming the sky overhead, holding back waters of the firmament, and there are certainly no floodgates up there. But this isn't meant to be a literal history, or a precise description of how the flood happened. Like many other things in Genesis, it is meant to teach by parable, not to give us the details of a great flood.

Feeling a bit mortified?
 
Barbarian said:
The early Hebrews also thought the sky was a solid dome over a flat Earth with windows in it to let rain fall.

On the other hand, many Jewish theologians recognized that Genesis was not a literal history.

According to some Seventh-day Adventists, the only way to maintain a strong theology of the Sabbath is by way of an unbendingly literalistic account of the creation week in Genesis. Yet Orthodox Judaism has included non-literal readings of the creation, without controversy or schism, for more than a millennium. Although the Jewish faith includes provisions for anathematizing and excommunicating heretics (as in the famous trial of Spinoza on charges of pantheism or atheism), no Jew has ever been declared herem for failing to be a strict young earth creationist or literalist on the days of creation in Genesis 1. Abraham Joshua Heschel—a Hasidic Jew and the preeminent twentieth century interpreter of the Sabbath—did not subscribe to a literalistic creation week. Neither did perhaps the most highly revered and authoritative rabbinical interpreter of the Torah from the 12th century up to the present. According to a medieval Jewish saying still repeated by orthodox Jews today, “From Moses [in the Torah] to Moses [Maimonides] there was none like Moses.” Yet Rabbi Moses Maimonides taught that the six days recorded in Genesis should not be understood as literal 24-hour time periods.
http://spectrummagazine.org/article/news/2010/02/01/moses-maimonides-literal-meaning-genesis
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Sorry Barbarian, no matter what fancy dance around the camp fire you want to dance, the Hebrew calendar has you dancing your jig in the year 5777.
You can not fairly label Bible believing Christians as being Y.E.C. deriving their beliefs from 20th century stuff.
I see you have just posted some SDA stuff. not sure if that is contra regs or not but me thinks you are skating on thin ice in an effort to bolster your argument that admittedly needs a lot of bolstering.
 
Barbarian said:
You've compressed several thousand years here. By Paul's time, every educated person in the area knew that the Earth was round. However, the Hebrew word for sky:
•raqia: extended (solid) surface, vault of heaven supporting waters above, firmament, dome, vault. The etymology is of something like brass, beaten out into a solid sheet. A sort of great inverted bowl.

Presupposed a solid dome supporting waters of the "firmament" which fell as rain when windows in the dome opened. Hence the Genesis:
In translating raqia we confront a different but equally difficult challenge. What the word still meant when Tyndale was deciding how to render it in English was a rigid (probably metallic) dome-of-heaven, which surrounded and protected us. He thought the sun and the moon to be embedded in the firmament along with the “fixed” stars, and that the whole assemblage rotated around an axis that pointed toward the North Star. We no longer believe that to be the case. In fact, we don’t believe there ever was a “firmament.” Faced with this situation today, translators have gone in two directions. One group, unwilling to translate the Hebrew as it reads, has translated raqia as “expanse,” fully aware that the average reader will interpret “expanse” as “atmospheric expanse” (which does exist but which the Hebrew does not support at all). The other group of translators has translated raqia “dome” or “vault,” not worrying about the fact that space exploration has found no evidence of such an entity.
http://spectrummagazine.org/article...-account-six-hebrew-words-make-all-difference

Hence the flood story...
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood gates of heaven were opened: 12 And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Now there is no great bowl forming the sky overhead, holding back waters of the firmament, and there are certainly no floodgates up there. But this isn't meant to be a literal history, or a precise description of how the flood happened. Like many other things in Genesis, it is meant to teach by parable, not to give us the details of a great flood.

Feeling a bit mortified?
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Yeah, a magazine article.....that'll show those mean old scriptures who the boss is.......God could not have possibly meant to communicate anything about the 3 heavens; He must have been telling them another parable.
Barbarian, you put your faith in the strangest of writings.......You should try trusting God's word not mans.......you will be less mortified and befuddled.......
 
civilwarbuff said:
Yeah, a magazine article.....that'll show those mean old scriptures who the boss is.......
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Feel free to research what the word means. You'll find that it's what I just showed you. Notice that Genesis says that the floodgates in the (raqia) were opened to let the rain fall to start the flood. So, the article is just showing you what the Bible says about it. The ancient Hebrews saw the sky as a big dome with windows in it to let rain fall through.

God could not have possibly meant to communicate anything about the 3 heavens;
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Obviously, there are no floodgates in the sky, and the sky is not a big inverted bowl holding back water from us. It's just what primitive people made of it. Because the lesson God was teaching us had nothing to do with the way the water showed up, the person writing the story didn't make it scientifically accurate. No reason to do so. And notice, when people learned by classical Hellenistic times, that the Earth was round, and that there was no bowl up there, no one went berserk over it. They just recognized the figurative language for what it was, and went on.

You should try trusting God's word not man's.......you will be less mortified and befuddled.
 
calvin said:
Sorry Barbarian, no matter what fancy dance around the camp fire you want to dance, the Hebrew calendar has you dancing your jig in the year 5777.
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That doesn't seem to play so well with Judaism:

As director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History, Rabbi Natan Slifkin embodies the ideal of a Biblical scientist. He doesn’t see any contradictions between the worlds of Bible and science. Judaism, he explains, has always been able to accommodate science and theology. He quoted the Rambam, a preeminent medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher.


“As Rambam said, accept the truth from wherever it comes,” he told Breaking Israel News. “According to the rationalist approach, it is preferable to explain creation in scientific terms, because it is always preferable to see God working within nature and a system of law. “


Conflicts do arise between Torah and science. The Hebrew calendar, presently standing at 5776, is, in theory, based on the creation of the world. Rabbi Slifkin again quoted the Rambam’s Guide to the Perplexed, in which the rabbinical scholar wrote, “The account of creation is not all to be taken literally.”


The Rambam went on to explain that the Six Days represent a conceptual rather than historical account of creation. Rabbi Slifkin cited Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman (1843-1921), a member of Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages, who suggested that the Six Days of Creation were lengthy eras rather than 24-hour periods.
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/...aism-rejects-creationism/#Z8XerjAshmz6Y2Q8.99

You can not fairly label Bible believing Christians as being Y.E.C. deriving their beliefs from 20th century stuff.
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YE creationism was invented in the 20th century by an Adventist "prophetess." Would you like to see the evidence for that?
 
Barbarian said:
<<Snip>>


YE creationism was invented in the 20th century by an Adventist "prophetess." Would you like to see the evidence for that?
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Ahh, now I see where you are getting your unorthodox ideas from.
nuff said.
Even within the Hebrew community, there are nay sayers and apostates,
so Just citing people who have a more personally satisfying world view will not ever change the actual truth.
Just reflect for a moment on how many leaders of the Jews were in need of correction in Jesus' time on Earth, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Barbarian, where would you turn to have your physical eye sight tested, checked and corrected? A Doctor, ophthalmologist or similar right?
So why do you turn to blind guides and other unauthorised sources to nurture your spiritual sight?
Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone revealed in Scripture alone.
 
Wait a second....you are claiming an article written about how/why Tyndale translated Hebrew the way he did as opposed to how the ancient Hebrews understood the concept of 'the heavens'?
civilwarbuff said:
I don't think so. The Hebrews were well aware of the heavens from Genesis 1:1, Genesis 7:11, Exodus 32:13, and Nehemiah 9:6. Paul speaks of the 3rd heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.
Click to expand...
........Nice try.
Why did the translators of Genesis choose the English words that they did? What might their choices have done to the Genesis story? We (within the limitations of a short essay) would like to examine what English Bible translators have done down through the centuries and, more importantly, what we think they could and ought to do today—ifthey are to avoid misleading those who read Genesis 1 in 2012. (From your link)
Barbarian said:
•raqia: extended (solid) surface, vault of heaven supporting waters above, firmament, dome, vault. The etymology is of something like brass, beaten out into a solid sheet. A sort of great inverted bowl.

Presupposed a solid dome supporting waters of the "firmament" which fell as rain when windows in the dome opened. Hence the Genesis:
In translating raqia we confront a different but equally difficult challenge. What the word still meant when Tyndale was deciding how to render it in English was a rigid (probably metallic) dome-of-heaven, which surrounded and protected us. He thought the sun and the moon to be embedded in the firmament along with the “fixed” stars, and that the whole assemblage rotated around an axis that pointed toward the North Star. We no longer believe that to be the case. In fact, we don’t believe there ever was a “firmament.” Faced with this situation today, translators have gone in two directions. One group, unwilling to translate the Hebrew as it reads, has translated raqia as “expanse,” fully aware that the average reader will interpret “expanse” as “atmospheric expanse” (which does exist but which the Hebrew does not support at all). The other group of translators has translated raqia “dome” or “vault,” not worrying about the fact that space exploration has found no evidence of such an entity.
Click to expand...
Barbarian said:
You've compressed several thousand years here.
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You need to take that up with God; I have no idea why he waited until Moses to put his word to pen and paper.
 
civilwarbuff said:
You need to take that up with God; I have no idea why he waited until Moses to put his word to pen and paper.
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Side bar....do we know that for sure? I've heard Noah brought some "bible" with him on the ark. Can't be dogmatic on it, just saying.
 
 
Cygnus said:
I've often seen Theo-Evos present those concepts...as to say...HAH!!! Here's what they thought. But, the question is, did they get it right? is their concept accurate? Partially accurate?
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Maybe from their physical perspective, horizon to horizon, the view can be viewed as a bowl since you can only see a portion of the sky. My point was the concept of (at least) 3 heavens which seems apparent. Even Paul understood the concept.
 
civilwarbuff said:
Wait a second....you are claiming an article written about how/why Tyndale translated Hebrew the way he did as opposed to how the ancient Hebrews understood the concept of 'the heavens'?
Click to expand...

No, I'm showing you that the Hebrews originally thought of the sky as a large, solid, inverted bowl holding back water above it. They thought it had gates in it, so that they could be opened to let some of the water fall as rain. That is the meaning we see, for example, in the flood story, with gates being opened in a solid sky let water flood the land.

Why did the translators of Genesis choose the English words that they did? What might their choices have done to the Genesis story?
Click to expand...

They didn't have much choice. The text says "floodgates" even though by that time they knew that the sky wasn't a solid dome and there were no gates. They treated it as a parable and went on.

As you know, YE creationism is a modern doctrine, no older than the last century. So it wasn't an issue when they did this.
 
civilwarbuff said:
Maybe from their physical perspective, horizon to horizon, the view can be viewed as a bowl since you can only see a portion of the sky.
Click to expand...

Figuratively. People still use that metaphor, even if they know it's not literally true. So did the later Jewish scholars who recognized that the Earth was actually round, and that the sky was not a solid dome with gates in it, as Genesis says.
 
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