Posted on 01/02/2010 12:02:43 PM PST by urroner
In the thread on General/Chat forum, Evolution caught in the act: Scientists measure how quickly genomes change, Restore discussed a interesting and recent scientific discovery, genome within certain plants are occurring more rapidly than expected, a lot faster. As I was reading this thread, somebody asked how evolution explained how the moon got there. Okay, evolution doesn't, as pointed out by several people on the thread, but geology has does a pretty good job of that explaination.
This article got me to thinking about those who say the Bible states that God only took 6,000 years before the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, who were created about 6,000 years ago, then I remembered an article I read from a OT scholar, Margaret Barker, who is also a Methodist minister from England. She is an expert in the First Temple era of Israel. This is what she had to say about the first couple of chapters in Genesis in her paper "Paradise Lost" (bolding in original):
Adam. The word simply means a human being. The Hebrew text of the Book of Genesis says, literally: ‘God created the adam in his image, … male and female he created them.’ (Genesis 1.27). The stories of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden (Eden means ‘delight’) stand at the beginning of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and they have been pondered by interpreters of Scripture ever since they were written. They are evidence that the issues which will concern us during this symposium are the fundamental issues.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, when archaeologists discovered the creation story of ancient Babylon, the initial reaction was one of alarm. The story was similar to the story in Genesis, so how could the Babylonians have known it? Did the writer of Genesis take stories from another culture? Was the Bible not unique? Closer study, however, showed that the apparently similar stories were saying two very different things about the nature of the human being and the human’s place in the world.
Why am I telling you this? Because the Adam stories in Genesis must be read for what they are – not just a primitive description of how the world came to be made, but the means by which profound issues were addressed in a culture which had storytellers rather than philosophers. The Adam stories passed into Jewish and Christian culture (and Muslim, but I have no expert knowledge of Islam) as the setting within which the great questions were discussed. The implications of the Genesis stories are often accepted even by those who would deny any knowledge of the Bible. Why do people in the West think that the world should be a good and pleasant place to live?. Is it perhaps because there is some deep memory of the biblical story and the words ‘God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good’ (Genesis 1.31)? Is there a memory of Paradise Lost?
Why do people use the Bible as a science book when it comes to earth science and its creation?
Because the author (God) was there.
THE Adam was a direct creation by God after the creation of other forms of life, including different races of men. Adam was mentioned as he was the progenitor from which Christ would come. IOW, the Bible is the story of the tribes......plural mind you, of Israel. There were other people for Cain to go to after he murdered his brother. Under my theory and belief, those who would give birth to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, came from THE Adam. Other people on this Earth were created between “IN THE BEGINNING and THE Adam.” Just as if I were to tell the story of ME, it would start at my birth...to go back to my parents, or grandparents would lend light only peripheraly.
Hello?
Geology doesn't even explain how the earth got here. I once asked a geologist (by profession and training) friend what the conventional wisdom was about the earth when it was only 2000 miles in diameter.
He said to me that that "was planetary science."
Geologists start with the same 8000 mile diameter earth that Genesis does.
ML/NJ
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I don't understand your sentence. "God only took 6,000 years before the creation of Adam and Eve"?! "Took" for what? I think that a word or two are missing. Please clarify.
Regards,
There is one big biblical problem with God creating Adam separately from different races of men. Romans 5:12 says “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
Sin came into the world by Adam, and therefore all have sinned. But if God created many different “adams” then we are not all descended from the one Adam, are not all sinners, and don’t all need Christ.
Genesis 1 talks about creation of adam. If this passage is referring to God creating various races of men, then why does Genesis 2:5 state “there was not a man [adam] to till the ground.”?
Genesis 1 and 2 are just different naratives of the same event.
The Bible doesn’t mention any other people that Cain went to after the murder of Abel. It does say that he went to live in the land of Nod. He took his wife with him, which of course would have also been his sister, as there wasn’t anyone else around to marry.
The tribes of Israel happen much later, and really have nothing to do with creation.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, when archaeologists discovered the creation story of ancient Babylon, the initial reaction was one of alarm. The story was similar to the story in Genesis, so how could the Babylonians have known it? Did the writer of Genesis take stories from another culture? Was the Bible not unique? Closer study, however, showed that the apparently similar stories were saying two very different things about the nature of the human being and the human’s place in the world.
The Enuma Elish is readily available and inexpensive (Alexander Heidel, Babylonian Genesis). It's also, apart from some elements, not a whole lot like Genesis.
Why do people use the Bible as a science book when it comes to earth science and its creation?
Well, for the first thing, because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob made it all... :-) ... and then for the second thing, He's the one who saw what happened, and He's telling y'all about it and what happened and how long it took Him... LOL...
He took six days for creation not because He couldn't do it in less time (He could but He didn't choose to do so). He set up the six days as a pattern for mankind and rest on the seventh.
He just wanted you to remember it... you see...
It sounds fairly non-complicated to me...
There is one big biblical problem with God creating Adam separately from different races of men. Romans 5:12 says “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
Sin came into the world by Adam, and therefore all have sinned. But if God created many different “adams” then we are not all descended from the one Adam, are not all sinners, and don’t all need Christ.
Genesis 1 talks about creation of adam. If this passage is referring to God creating various races of men, then why does Genesis 2:5 state “there was not a man [adam] to till the ground.”?
1)Genesis 1 and 2 are just different naratives of the same event.
1) They are very different to my eyes, Chapter 2 begins after the 7th day
2)The Bible doesn’t mention any other people that Cain went to after the murder of Abel. It does say that he went to live in the land of Nod. He took his wife with him, which of course would have also been his sister, as there wasn’t anyone else around to marry.
2) He bore a “mark”...so as to not be killed by any people that came upon him.....His geneaology is stricken from that of Adam....there was no sister mentioned as going away with him.
3)The tribes of Israel happen much later, and really have nothing to do with creation.
3) The tribes of Israel can be directly traced to Adam and Eve through Seth.
The Bible is a history book of the people descended from Adam, it mentions others only peripherally if at all.
Some of the names of Satan are, the serpent, death, man of sin, King of Tyre, Prince of Tyre, Son of Perdition, even Father of Cain.
1) They are very different to my eyes, Chapter 2 begins after the 7th day
1) But chapter 2 begins with the fact that God ENDED his creative work. He was done creating. "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made;" So, He couldn't have created Adam after that.
2)The Bible doesn’t mention any other people that Cain went to after the murder of Abel. It does say that he went to live in the land of Nod. He took his wife with him, which of course would have also been his sister, as there wasn’t anyone else around to marry.
2) He bore a “mark”...so as to not be killed by any people that came upon him.....His geneaology is stricken from that of Adam....there was no sister mentioned as going away with him.
2) God tells Cain that he will be a "fugitive and a vagabond". He is being sent AWAY from people. Cain is worried about someone FINDING him and killing him. As far as Adam's genealogy is concerned, he had other sons and daughters other than Cain, Abel, and Seth. They aren't mentioned by name either. The genealogies in the bible are there to show the lineage of the Messiah. Christ isn't of the line of Cain. Many women aren't mentioned in the bible. It is mostly patriarchal.
3)The tribes of Israel happen much later, and really have nothing to do with creation.
3) The tribes of Israel can be directly traced to Adam and Eve through Seth.
3) Of course all the tribes of Israel are from the line of Seth. But you had used the fact that there were many tribes of Israel as support that God created many people groups at the beginning. I just pointed out that it does not support that.
The Bible is a history book of the people descended from Adam, it mentions others only peripherally if at all.
Can you point out even one person in the bible that is obviously not descended from Adam?
Some of the names of Satan are, the serpent, death, man of sin, King of Tyre, Prince of Tyre, Son of Perdition, even Father of Cain.
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. He's called "lord of the flies", too. But that doesn't make him the actual lord of the flies.
“This article got me to thinking about those who say the Bible states that God only took 6,000 years before the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, who were created about 6,000 years ago”
Are you saying these people think the world is 12,000 years old? 6,000 from Creation to the first man and woman, then another 6,000 to the present?
I don’t know of any Christian denomination which believes that.
“science book”
The passage quoted does not try to use the Bible as a science book.
Besides, science is just one more way of studying what God is done, and how He has set things up.
There are a couple of posts here that infers rather strongly that there are those who believe the first part of Genesis should be used as a science book.
I know of denominations that believe that each day of the creation was 1000 years and that it’s been 6000 years since the creation of Adam and Eve and they are rather emphatic about that.
“There are a couple of posts here that infers rather strongly that there are those who believe the first part of Genesis should be used as a science book.”
Stephen Hawking wrote, “There is a probably apocryphal story, that when Laplace was asked by Napoleon, how God fitted into this system, he replied, ‘Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis.’ I don’t think that Laplace was claiming that God didn’t exist. It is just that He doesn’t intervene to break the laws of science. That must be the position of every scientist. A scientific law is not a scientific law if it only holds when some supernatural being decides to let things run, and not intervene.”
The trouble with that is that the laws of science are only as they are because that’s the way God wants it. He can, and does, intervene to break the laws of science. They bind us, but not God.
Now, I don’t think the Bible should be used as a “science textbook” either, but that’s really a red herring. The real issue is preventing children from being informed of the things I wrote in the paragraph above, no matter what pretext is being advanced.
“I know of denominations that believe that each day of the creation was 1000 years and that it’s been 6000 years since the creation of Adam and Eve and they are rather emphatic about that.”
Why should you care what they believe? Do you think the Constitution should be amended to remove protections on freedom of religion?
More to the point (and not meaning to correct you), The Table of Nations... EVERYBODY... relates everyone to Noah. If genealogy is meant to have any particular reference, it begins with Noah and his family.
The purpose for the listing of men before that is to prove the age of the world, and the genealogy of Christ in his role and comparison as "THE" Adam - The first of the resurrected.
Not to say that the other aspects of the creation account are not without immense value...
In the OP, I asked why some people use the Bible as a science book. I wasn’t saying that they shouldn’t or should, but simply why.
“In the OP, I asked why some people use the Bible as a science book.”
Some people take Genesis too literally, IMO.
“I wasn’t saying that they shouldn’t or should, but simply why.”
It seemed that you were. Perhaps if you phrased it differently; something along the lines of, “Some people want to use the Bible as a science book. Why is that, do you suppose?”
Good suggestion.
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