The Literal Meaning of Genesis

[markathome]

I don't think they was as stupid as we are taught they all was?


An essay written around 160 AD, attributed to Lucian,
a mock legal prosecution called The Consonants at Law
Sigma v. Tau in the Court of Seven Vowels
Sigma petitions the court to
sentence Tau to death by crucifixion, saying:
Men weep, and bewail their lot, and curse Cadmus
with many curses for introducing Tau into the family of letters;
they say it was his body that tyrants took for a model,
his shape that they imitated,
when they set up structures on which men are crucified.
Stauros (cross) the vile engine is called, and it derives its vile name
from him. Now, with all these crimes upon him, does he not deserve
death, nay, many deaths? For my part I know none bad enough but
that supplied by his own shape Tt+ that shape which he gave to the
gibbet(gallows) named stauros/cross after him by men?

 

[jasonc]

Yes. Long before YE creationism was invented, most creationists were aware that the world was very old. Most of them were convinced that living things had been here for a very long time, as well.

No,you like to ignore judaism. The nation of isreal,Judea had the tanach before the church .I can put the current religious day,it will be In a hebrew month,and a year of 5 thousand something.

No hebrew speaker ,scholar would say on the first age God said let their be light.

 

[Nathan]

No,you like to ignore judaism. The nation of isreal,Judea had the tanach before the church .I can put the current religious day,it will be In a hebrew month,and a year of 5 thousand something.

No hebrew speaker ,scholar would say on the first age God said let their be light.

True, and genealogy. We know how long Adam lived, and we can trace ancestors back to him.

 

[jasonc]

Www.chabad.org

 

[Barbarian]

True, and genealogy. We know how long Adam lived, and we can trace ancestors back to him.

Which of the conflicting genealogies do you think is right?

 

[Barbarian]

No,you like to ignore judaism. The nation of isreal,Judea had the tanach before the church .I can put the current religious day,it will be In a hebrew month,and a year of 5 thousand something.

No hebrew speaker ,scholar would say on the first age God said let their be light.

Likely not. But there certainly was a diversity of views on the age of creation, and the literal or figurative nature of Genesis.

Maimonides major concern in his writings on questions of origins was to demonstrate, contra both Plato and Aristotle, that the creation occurred as the Bible records it. In Plato’s Timaeus, the world is created by a Demiurge de novo (that is, at a moment in time) but not ex nihilo (that is, out of nothing). Plato imagines, in other words, a creation from pre-existing matter in the cosmos. For Aristotle, according to Maimonides’ reading, the world was meanwhile created neither de novo nor ex nihilo but is an eternal emanation of the Unmoved Mover. Although Maimonides confessed that he could not disprove the Aristotelian view through either rigorous logical or empirical proofs, he maintained that the creation occurred both de novo and ex nihilo as the language of Genesis clearly suggests.


Even as Maimonides argued for the superiority of Scripture to Greek philosophy on important questions of origins, however, he also insisted that it was a mistake to read the six days of the Genesis narrative as literal 24-hour periods. The creation in Genesis, Maimonides taught, is not primarily intended as a cosmogony (that is, as a scientific description of the way the world came to be in every particular detail) but rather as a cosmology, i.e., a description of the structure and order of God’s creation. Strictly speaking, the question of how the world first came into being is undiscoverable by scientific means and remains veiled in mystery, even within the biblical narrative itself. This means we must decide what we will believe about the most important questions of origins on non-scientific grounds, including the authority of divine revelation. But the theological meaning of Genesis is not tied, Maimonides maintained, to any kind of unbending or chronological literalism (in the modern sense of the word). The days of Genesis 1 are essentially metaphorical.
http://spectrummagazine.org/article/news/2010/02/01/moses-maimonides-literal-meaning-genesis

I was pleased to learn that Maimonides also wrote that if science and scripture seem to be at odds, it is because we have misunderstood one or both of them.

 

[Cygnus]

Old earth geology is before that.

Bishop Usher did the math.

The Word of God concludes the earth is not old.

 

[Cygnus]

No. As you learned, the prevailing view among early Christians was that the creation story in Genesis was not literal history.

Yeah, that's why the authors of the OT and NT presented Genesis as literal.

 

[Nathan]

Which of the conflicting genealogies do you think is right?

Which ones conflict?

 

[markathome]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet
Archeological evidence of the use of the script by the Israelites for writing the Hebrew language dates to around the 10th century BCE.
Maybe their dating is off?

Our NT scribes couldn't keep 3 simple numbers like 666 without screwing it up in a couple hundred years and we are to trust the Jewish Scribes numbering system?
If I go from my grandfather to my father to me to my son's son death then ??? years could pass
if all that is recorded is the grandfather begot son/son since maybe we wasn't important but they was/are?

I take the Bible quite literally, sometimes probably to literal but I don't trust their numbers or their numbering systems.

 

[Barbarian]

Which ones conflict?

There are, for example, two different genealogies for Jesus.

 

[jasonc]

Bishop Usher did the math.

The Word of God concludes the earth is not old.

Where did I say that?

Merely stating that it wasn't atheism that taught, pushed old earth. Geanologies,being Jewish myself .they were doing it first.

 

[Edward]

There are, for example, two different genealogies for Jesus.

There are? I din know that. Are they both in scripture? I'm guessing no.

So that's easy. Believe the one in scripture, toss the one from the man in file 13...

 

[WIP]

This is the Theology forum. Conflicting arguments presented should include the Scripture to support the claim. Do not reply to this post in this thread.

 

[Nathan]

There are, for example, two different genealogies for Jesus.

Ah, I don't see them conflicting?

Regardless, you could pick either one of them. Trace it back, and find that if the "evening and morning" of the sixth day when Adam was created could not be any longer than the genealogy record of Adam indicates. Then the other "days" of creation would be the same.

We are talking a maximum of ~130 years of unknown time before we know he was out of the garden.

 

[Mike]

WIP made his point well, but I'd like to piggyback on his point and mention another of the required rules. We may begin taking further action if these rules are not followed. This is the Theology Forum; not the Politics, Science, or Lounge.

I'm using a post I just made in another thread to make a point here.

A reminder for our participants who don't often post in the TF (as well as some established ones) , I encourage you to read the Sticky, "Rules for Posting in the Theology Forum" with a special emphasis on the requirement to cite scripture when we reject someone's claims.

Important also is to target comments toward the subject; not the person. A random example would be stating "The way you twist and distort scripture...". This would be focused on the actions and/or motives of the person.

Please, everyone, read, understand, and adhere to all the rules in the sticky.

Thank you.

 

[jasonc]

There are? I din know that. Are they both in scripture? I'm guessing no.

So that's easy. Believe the one in scripture, toss the one from the man in file 13...

Luke,the gospel has one and Matthew.

Both have been in the bible fir ages.be my guest. Neither contradict each other as one of mary,and the other joseph.both are descendents of King David.Joseph from the cursed line and Mary isnt.

 

[Barbarian]

Ah, I don't see them conflicting?

They don't even involve all the same people. So the idea that they are literal genealogies goes out the window.

Both have been in the bible fir ages.be my guest. Neither contradict each other as one of mary,and the other joseph.both are descendents of King David.Joseph from the cursed line and Mary isnt.

But they both claim to be through Joseph, so that won't work, either.

 

[Cygnus]

Where did I say that?

Merely stating that it wasn't atheism that taught, pushed old earth. Geanologies,being Jewish myself .they were doing it first.

Add up the ages presented in the linages. You get an answer of somewhere around 6,000 years.

 

[Cygnus]

There are, for example, two different genealogies for Jesus.

Scholars have shown where one genealogy belongs to Joe while the other belongs to Mary.