A Critique of Dr. Peter Enns’ Book The Bible Tells Me So

[annsni]

But the ONLY narrative that is in the Bible that people were not there for was creation but the rest of them, people were. Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible and I believe he was at the exodus and would know how many people went with him. We see actual numbers - were those made up? Was it their particular culture that caused Moses to look on a couple of hundred people and say "Eh, I think it is about 600,000 men plus the women and children"?

As for the virgin birth, how do we not know that it was Mary just telling us a story? You know, it's kind of embarrassing to find yourself pregnant and especially in that culture that would stone you for adultery. How do we know this is actually true?

 

[sag38]

Suggesting that the creation story is allegory is nothing short of heresy. It destroys the credibility of the rest of the scripture. Next, we are going to be told that Jonah really wasn't swallowed by a whale. In fact, Jonah never existed. That too is allegory. Where does this line of heretical reasoning end?

 

[ShagNappy]

Suggesting that the creation story is allegory is nothing short of heresy.

Think I have to fully agree with this. We can argue all day how long ago it happened, but to claim the creation story is allegory is absurd. The grammar and word choice give all the evidence needed to see that Moses considered this an actual historical event and literal days, not ages.

 

[Don]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ck-hole-blast-biggest-science-galaxies-space/

Astronomers Find a Dusty Galaxy That Shouldn't Exist
An object from the very early universe is bafflingly rich with dust that theory says shouldn't have formed yet.

From the article:
The dusty galaxy is just one of the recent surprises astronomers have found. "Last week," says Marrone, "we learned of an incredibly massive black hole in the early universe. Now we have this average galaxy with significant amounts of dust. We've had this cartoon picture of the early universe, but it's clear that we really don't know what's going on."
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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ow-about-earths-second-moon-180954455/?no-ist

...but even before we got there, Earth and the Moon had a little companion. This tiny, rocky world is named 3753 Cruithne, which comes from Old Irish and refers to the early Irish people and their king, Cruidne. You can forgive your parents and your grade-school teachers for not mentioning it though: The object was only discovered in 1986 and its orbit mapped in 1997.

It's not that everything once thought about our solar system was wrong, it’s that researchers are constantly new learning things. They suspect that Cruithne and other objects like it can tell us about the changing nature of the solar system and formation of planets. And at the very least, new information keeps things fun.
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When people talk in absolutes like "the earth can't be only 6,000 or 10,000 years old, I invariably seem to come across yet another article from our scientific community that admits we don't have all the answers, and that things aren't necessarily what we think. Why, even this week, the proposal that there was no big bang has come up again.

The problem with identifying science as truth -- is that scientific truth is constantly changing as we realize we didn't know what we thought we did.

In the meantime, scripture remains unchanging.

 

[go2church]

Well folks, you're just going to have to read the book. The modern evangelical black and white, right and wrong, construct doesn't do justice to understanding how the ancients communicated truth through oral tradition and storytelling.

God progressively revealed himself to humanity in ways that made sense to the people until the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. The bible is the record of the revealing.

 

[sag38]

Well folks, you're just going to have to read the book. The modern evangelical black and white, right and wrong, construct doesn't do justice to understanding how the ancients communicated truth through oral tradition and storytelling.

God progressively revealed himself to humanity in ways that made sense to the people until the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. The bible is the record of the revealing.

Yep, they were too stupid back then to understand as you understand. :BangHead:

 

[quantumfaith]

Yep, they were too stupid back then to understand as you understand. :BangHead:

Your sarcasm was not missed, but caution because it could also be redirected at yourself.

 

[sag38]

I am not using sarcasm. This is fact. By stating that God used a progressive revelation to help these poor schmucks understand is heresy. They were just as smart and able to understand as you are today (perhaps even more so based on this allegory bull manure that is being spread in this thread).

 

[Revmitchell]

Well folks, you're just going to have to read the book. The modern evangelical black and white, right and wrong, construct doesn't do justice to understanding how the ancients communicated truth through oral tradition and storytelling.

God progressively revealed himself to humanity in ways that made sense to the people until the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. The bible is the record of the revealing.

Again none of this is true.

 

[The Biblicist]

Jesus Christ claimed to be the Creator. Claimed to be God. Yet, he asserted that Adam and Eve were CREATED by God rather than EVOLVED through natural selection, AND he placed their origin "AT THE BEGINNING of Creation" rather than BILLIONS OF YEARS sometime AFTER creation.

Theistic Evolutionists, just like Evolutionist have a history of CHANGING their views in regard to what they previously claimed to be scientific FACTS. The Bible remains the same and I will take the Word of Christ and Moses over those tooting the evolutionary horn from a theistic view point.

 

[go2church]

I am not using sarcasm. This is fact. By stating that God used a progressive revelation to help these poor schmucks understand is heresy. They were just as smart and able to understand as you are today (perhaps even more so based on this allegory bull manure that is being spread in this thread).

It has nothing to do with the intelligence of the ancients. It is about HOW they communicated. God was revealed in a way that made sense to HOW they communicated. They told stories, so God used story. Later on when people and culture changed, communicated in a different manner, God again met them where they were.

You think you know what you're talking about when you use the word allegory but clearly you don't. No one is claiming the story of Creation was written with a hidden or secret meaning.

You clearly don't understand the very biblical concept of progressive revelation.

You claim heresy, but considering your misuse of the these other terms, I'm pretty sure your grasp of what is and isn't a heresy is tenuous at best.

 

[go2church]

Again none of this is true.

Not willing to engage the topic at hand? Why don't you tell us what parts aren't true?

Well folks, you're just going to have to read the book. The modern evangelical black and white, right and wrong, construct doesn't do justice to understanding how the ancients communicated truth through oral tradition and storytelling.

What here isn't true?

God progressively revealed himself to humanity in ways that made sense to the people until the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. The bible is the record of the revealing.

How about here?

 

[sag38]

It has nothing to do with the intelligence of the ancients. It is about HOW they communicated. God was revealed in a way that made sense to HOW they communicated. They told stories, so God used story. Later on when people and culture changed, communicated in a different manner, God again met them where they were.

You think you know what you're talking about when you use the word allegory but clearly you don't. No one is claiming the story of Creation was written with a hidden or secret meaning.

You clearly don't understand the very biblical concept of progressive revelation.

You claim heresy, but considering your misuse of the these other terms, I'm pretty sure your grasp of what is and isn't a heresy is tenuous at best.

The arrogance of this position is evidenced by your suggestion of my ignorance. Your type of progressive revelation is an evolutionary response that twists the scripture to fit a an evolutionary point of view. It suggests that the ancients were not as advanced as we are today as if we have somehow evolved. I first ran into this position in college where a so called christian history professor suggested that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush because that was the only way Moses and the Israelites could understand God.

 

[quantumfaith]

The arrogance of this position is evidenced by your suggestion of my ignorance. Your type of progressive revelation is an evolutionary response that twists the scripture to fit a an evolutionary point of view. It suggests that the ancients were not as advanced as we are today as if we have somehow evolved. I first ran into this position in college where a so called christian history professor suggested that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush because that was the only way Moses and the Israelites could understand God.

To suggest that the ancients were as advanced (knowledge) as we are today is complete intellectual foolishness. You can "poo-poo" evolutionary biology all you care to, and even make fun of those who support such concepts.

 

[The Biblicist]

To suggest that the ancients were as advanced (knowledge) as we are today is complete intellectual foolishness. You can "poo-poo" evolutionary biology all you care to, and even make fun of those who support such concepts.

Remember when the intellectual elites were claiming the ancients were so ignorant they didn't even have writing at the time of Moses and that is why the Pentateuch had to be dated much later than 1400 B.C.??????

Are they so ignorant that the past 100 years we have been trying to find out how they built the pyramids and why so many theories abound?

To imagine that Adam the most perfect specimen directly from God's hands, and who walked with God for some time in the garden was inferior to us is really an ego walk in the park. The fact is that we do not know how advanced the pre-flood era was, but if they lived to be hundreds of years old, you can be sure they were much more advanced than we who live only about 80 years on average.

 

[quantumfaith]

Remember when the intellectual elites were claiming the ancients were so ignorant they didn't even have writing at the time of Moses and that is why the Pentateuch had to be dated much later than 1400 B.C.??????

Are they so ignorant that the past 100 years we have been trying to find out how they built the pyramids and why so many theories abound?

To imagine that Adam the most perfect specimen directly from God's hands, and who walked with God for some time in the garden was inferior to us is really an ego walk in the park. The fact is that we do not know how advanced the pre-flood era was, but if they lived to be hundreds of years old, you can be sure they were much more advanced than we who live only about 80 years on average.

I still don't think there was a "whole lot" of writing going on during the time of Moses. What writing there was, was quite limited.....even in the time of Jesus's ministry.

 

[quantumfaith]

Remember when the intellectual elites were claiming the ancients were so ignorant they didn't even have writing at the time of Moses and that is why the Pentateuch had to be dated much later than 1400 B.C.??????

Are they so ignorant that the past 100 years we have been trying to find out how they built the pyramids and why so many theories abound?

To imagine that Adam the most perfect specimen directly from God's hands, and who walked with God for some time in the garden was inferior to us is really an ego walk in the park. The fact is that we do not know how advanced the pre-flood era was, but if they lived to be hundreds of years old, you can be sure they were much more advanced than we who live only about 80 years on average.

We know that they had no idea of DNA, or the structure of atoms.....we could go on. You did not hear me call the ancient peoples "stupid", but to think they had or possessed levels of knowledge available today is not a smart thing.

 

[go2church]

The arrogance of this position is evidenced by your suggestion of my ignorance. Your type of progressive revelation is an evolutionary response that twists the scripture to fit a an evolutionary point of view. It suggests that the ancients were not as advanced as we are today as if we have somehow evolved. I first ran into this position in college where a so called christian history professor suggested that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush because that was the only way Moses and the Israelites could understand God.

It's a difference in context, not intelligence. Do we know more than the ancients? Sure, but knowing more today doesn't mean those of days gone by doesn't mean they weren't intelligent. After all what we know today has been built on what they knew. That is thoroughly misunderstanding progressive revelation. Suggesting such, tying it to evolutionary biology, is completely of your own doing, not contained in anything I have written.

 

[The Biblicist]

I still don't think there was a "whole lot" of writing going on during the time of Moses. What writing there was, was quite limited.....even in the time of Jesus's ministry.

Whole libraries have been dug up prior to Moses. Writing was wide spread and as far as we can tell prevalent in all ancient cultures some more than others.

 

[quantumfaith]

Whole libraries have been dug up prior to Moses. Writing was wide spread and as far as we can tell prevalent in all ancient cultures some more than others.

Do you have any links relative to these libraries. I would be interested to know about them.