Literal Creation Story

And they are quoted in God's own Exodus 20:8-11 summary of that Genesis 1-2 "account".

It is the "details" that are quoted. Paul also quotes them.

The "very details" that are so to be "denied" turn out to be the "premise" upon which all of our worship and many calls to obedience in the NT are based.

In Christ,

Bob

 

How much of the Gospel remains - once you deny the Creation account?

In Christ,

Bob

 

I'm just curious.. is anyone actually reading Bob's forty-something disparate, yet successive posts?

 

Grace Saves:

It is most OBVIOUS that Christians like yourself have allowed EVOLUTION to take over the science class, and for that reason thousands if not millions of students never seriously study the Biblical account... I wouldn't want to be in your shoes------ever.

 

I wasn’t there. There were three of them according to God’s word. God was the only one there to see them.

To your insistence, your question is premised on the idea that since there was no sun, there could not be 24 hour days. So you say, “I didn’t say that,” and then turn around and say it in your question. How ironic is that. I do understand you. I don’t understand your cavalier approach to the Bible. How do you question something you weren’t there to see, when the only person who was there said it was a 24 hour day? That seems very bold to me. I am not quite willing to be that bold in the face of the revelation of God.

As I said, It teaches it. To say “It seems pretty clear” is a colloquial way of making a point without being unnecessarily direct. It teaches it in Genesis 1, in Exodus 20, and in Matt 19. That is the word of God to Moses in the creation account, the word of God to his people in the Law, and the word of Christ to the Pharisees. In Genesis 1, the literal 24 hours days is explicit in the text. In Exod 20, God uses those literal days to assert a work week pattern for his people. Anything other than 24 hour days makes this text absurd. In Matt 19, Christ asserts the literal creation as a fact for his teaching on marriage and divorce.

A guide to interpreting the text is found in the normal usage of language everyday. It is the way we use it all the time.

I am not lying about you. Go back and read what you have said. You say it again in the next post. Genesis 1 teaches that God created animals before man. You believe Gen 2 teaches that he created man before animals. You have based your cosmology on Gen 2, thereby declaring Gen 1 to be wrong. If, as you suggest, Gen 2 is right (that God created man first, then animals), then Gen 1 (that says God created animals first, then man) has to be wrong. This is simple. Perhaps you missed it in your thinking.

This has reached the level of foolishness now. I have told you and shown you that Gen 2 can be reconciled by understanding the Hebrew form and assuming that 1 and 2 do not contradict. I do not believe they do. Therefore, I see the verb form in 2:19 as “had formed.” That is a legitimate aspect of it and it fits very nicely. There is no contradiction. The contradiction comes only because you will not increase your understanding on this point.

IN the future, confine your response to one post. We don’t need four posts for this.

 

A_Christian,

It is obvious that like millions of Christians, you hear the word "evolution" and apply thousands of pre-conceived connotations that this theory is directly set, in all its facets, at destroying Christianity, and when any sort of evidence comes forth, it must be rejected, because it is contrary to the faith.

On the other hand, my faith is firm and I understand that we have science as a gift from the Lord to help us be the co-regents he created us to be. The more I understand about God's creation, the more awesome I find God to be. Scientific theory has never made me doubt my Creator Lord. Those who stop believing in God because of the evolutionary theory were either not strong in their faith or did not have the faith to begin with.

But you keep preaching those misconceptions.

 

How do you know what intention the ancient writer had?? Every word used in Gen 1 indicates a literal usage. To have a poetic or non-literal usage in Gen 1 violates every grammatical rule we know about in Hebrew. It is you that has the burden to make that stick. You would have seven uses of YOM that contradict every other usage of that form in Scripture. That is a hard mountain to climb. A writer's intention is known by his words. When the author intended to communicate a period of time as in 2:4, he used a form that expressly communicates that. When he intended to communicate 24 hour days, he used a form that means only that.

There is no indication in the text that this is poetic. It has never been understood that way by Hebrew textual scholars, as evidenced by the fact that they present it as prose. There is simply no reason to see it as anything other than literal.

You are spinning this in the most beneficial way possible, and in a way that contradicts your church's history. However, it doesn't really help your position. The point is that you have to believe what your church tells you to believe, unless you are going to abandon the catechism.

There is nothing in the text that would indicate this. This is pure speculation, based on a need to find something. I do not share that need, and therefore reject this speculation.

But to say this is to assert that the text was in error. I agree that the how is not specific. It says that God created it. However, when the Bible speaks of "how," no matter how imprecise it is, it cannot be inaccurate. And that is the problem you run into. God specified a time frame, then used that time frame as the pattern for man's work week. To assert that the creation week was something more than six successive 24 hour days, is to assert that man should work differently than ancient Israel practiced and than we practice. That simply will not work. Every scriptural reference to creation assumes a literal account. There is no need to find anything else.

In fact, I would find it interesting to know why you think there is a need to find something else there. Why not just let the text stand as it does??

I think the text is violated when you make it mean something the words don't mean.

 

You're right. You weren't there. And if God was speaking of days in a figurative sense, to make a lovely narrative to explain His creation, it would not detract from anything. The use of "days" that total up to "seven" could just as easily be in the story to establish for the Jews a basis for their "six days of work, one day of rest" without God LITERALLY working that amount of time.

No, you don't understand. I AGREE THAT 24-HOUR PERIODS EXISTED FROM THE MOMENT TIME EXISTED. I am saying that an "earth day" is a 24-hour period that involves the rotation of the earth and the distance of the sun from the earth. Without these in place, calling a 24-hour period a "day" is totally relative and does not have the same meaning as a 24-hour "earth day" when the sun IS in place, when there is an actually rising and setting of the sun, thus, morning and evening.

Why does God have to be referring to literal 24-hour days for the creation account to be true?

I've already quoted the letters of Peter in which we see that to God, one day is as a thousand years, and that we should not "ignore this fact." I'm not boldly saying anything in the face of revelation other than what revelation tells me I'm not to ignore.

It teaches it because you said so. Nice evidence.

No. Because the text is indeed the Word of God, when God inspired man to write down the Creation as He wanted us to know, He employed the pattern of a six-day work week to give us a basis, because that is how he wanted us to live our lives (work, but also set aside time for worship). The practice is legitimate because Genesis is legitimate, AND TRUE, without the account being literal in all its facets. Genesis 1 and 2 are absolutely true because they share with us the Truth: God created the Heavens and the earth by His Holy Word, created man in His image, and man fell, but not without continued provision from God and the promise of a Savior.

Is that why you had to go back to the Hebrew? Seems the English is a little sticky.

No, you did lie, because you say I don't believe that Genesis 1 and 2 are true, when I have never said that, but said quite the opposite. I do not believe that all of the elements present are to be interpreted as LITERALLY true, but that does not make these two chapters any less true.

False. My whole point is that it doesn't matter, because the story doesn't need to be literally true to be wholly true.

So, I ask you how a stranded person on an island, with only an English Bible is supposed to reconcile seeming contradictions, and you say he needs to refer to the Hebrew, and make an inference as to which verb tense is correct.

Thank you for proving my point.

 

Oh, you would just have the stranded person accept what he heard from the science professor
verbatim. I wonder what the Skipper and Gilligan
would say...

 

What are you talking about?

This is a person who does not know Christ, but finds a Bible, and sees these odd discrepencies in the English text of many translations. If he were pressed to take it word-for-word literally, I foresee him having some problems.

But, you do display the ultra paranoid anti-science teacher attitude that is so common these days, as if they all denied God and used evolution as a means to explain origin (which I still have not seen demonstrated).

Maybe macro-evolution occurred, maybe it didn't. My point is that it would shake my faith none regardless.

 

Just curious. Has Carson said anything yet?

In Christ,

Bob

 

quote:
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Originally posted by Carson Weber:
Nowhere does the Bible say "The creation account is to be read literally". Rather, it is to be read literarily as all literature should. Some literature, when read literarily, is read exclusively literally (i.e. strict prose). Other literature, when read literarily, is read exclusively figuratively (i.e. allegory).

You're approaching the text with the assumption that the Creation narrative is to read strictly literally, when the ancient author probably did not have that intention.
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Pastor Larry - please note - Carson has not actually said anything in the text above. There is no exegetical - Bible-based point made. It is mere speculation and the "hope" that you will "speculate back" rather than apply the sound principles of exegesis to the problem.

When we let the Bible interpret the Bible - then we "see" the summary that God gives of the Genesis 1-2 "creation even" in Exodus 20:8-11. In that summary HE uses terms that "can" only mean 1 literal week as HE equates it with the week at Sinai.

Though this point in God's Word has been posted already - there remains no substantive response from our Catholic bretheren to this exegetical approach to scripture.

And obviously - we have no historic confirmation of Carson's spelation that the early Hebrews that Moses wrote to - were in any doubt at all - about the Genesis text being "true in every detail".

In Christ,

Bob

 

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Pastor Larry:
This has reached the level of foolishness now. I have told you and shown you that Gen 2 can be reconciled by understanding the Hebrew form and assuming that 1 and 2 do not contradict. I do not believe they do. Therefore, I see the verb form in 2:19 as “had formed.” That is a legitimate aspect of it and it fits very nicely. There is no contradiction. The contradiction comes only because you will not increase your understanding on this point.
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This is an argument regarding the "apparent meaning" of the text of the creation account.

There is "no question" that when the text states "There was evening and there was morning ONE Day" - the "apparent" meaning is one literal day with one literal evening and one literal morning.

The TIMELINE is the MOST apparent thing about the text. So when you ask "what does the man on the island" think when he reads it - the answer is taht the "sees the obvious". He "sees" that the author of the text is outlining one literal week.

When the man on the island gets to Exodus 20:8-11 and finds God summarizing the events of creation week "FOR in SIX DAYS the Lord MADE the heavens and the earth the sea and ALL that is in them and rested the Seventh day" --- THEN the man on the island sees that his view is "confirmed" in the text.

But that is "the details".

That is "the obvious part".

That is "the easy part".

That is the part our Catholic Bretheren find so hard to reconcile with the mythologies of evolutionism embraced by the RCC.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Notice that in contrast to the "Literal Creation Story" the RCC position is "the Fake Creation Story" and then it tries to add "But that is not a BAD thing".

In Christ,

Bob

 

I don't think that is the RCC position. I think Carson summed it up well on the first page as to to what the church teaches. What you have a problem with is the individuals, not the "RCC position." However, there are just as many non-RCCers who hold the positions espoused by our Catholic brethern here. I don't think anyone claims that the church does not allow one to take the Creation account literally. They are merely saying that that is not a litmus test for orthodoxy, like it is used by some Evangelicals. I hold to a literal understanding of the Creation account. I don't think I am being condemned by the Catholics here for doing so. However, if I was to use that as my litmus test for others, they would probably then be condemning me.

In Christ,
Neal

 

Except the meaning of the words used.

Did you even read this text?? I can't imagine that some of you participating here have read the text. Let me cite it for you:

Exodus 20:11 "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

Notice what it very clearly says: God made the heavens and the earth in six days and man is to follow that pattern. If you assert figurative days, then you destroy the comparison and leave man without a standard by which to judge his work week.

No, you don't understand. I AGREE THAT 24-HOUR PERIODS EXISTED FROM THE MOMENT TIME EXISTED. I am saying that an "earth day" is a 24-hour period that involves the rotation of the earth and the distance of the sun from the earth. Without these in place, calling a 24-hour period a "day" is totally relative and does not have the same meaning as a 24-hour "earth day" when the sun IS in place, when there is an actually rising and setting of the sun, thus, morning and evening.</font>[/QUOTE]Either you or me can't read or you are unwilling to tell the truth about yourself. You said that 24 hour periods existed but were not "earth days" without the sun. That is exactly what I said you said. You denied it, then said it again, then denied it, and then said it again. I understand what you are saying. And I think you understand what I am saying. You are just having a hard time following through with your argument here.

Because that is what the text God inspired said. If it was not 24 hour days, then God lied.

Notice that little word "as" in Peter and Psalms. That little word "as" is not found in the discussion of days in Genesis 1. Instead, the form used (nominative absolute followed by an ordinal number) always refers to a 24 hour day. Never anything else. So it comes down to what God said. When he wanted to say a day was as a thousand years, he assumed you knew what a "day" already was ... 24 hours.

You know that is not what I said.

And said that he himself followed that six day work week. How hard is that? Why do you insist that "day" must have a different meaning in the same context? You want Exod 20 to read: You work six 24 hour days because God worked six long periods of time. That is not what the text says. It makes no sense at all.

I agree, but I don't see how you can. You deny that Gen 1 is accurate becuase you keep insisting that the order found in Gen 2 is accurate. You can't have it both ways. You cannot assert both are true while asserting that one is false (unless "true" and "false" have new meanings). You continually insist that Gen 2 is correct that animals were created after man. Therefore, you must also assert that Genesis 1 is incorrect when it asserts that God created animals before man. He did not create them both before and after.

The English is a translation that makes fine sense. But you were confused by it. Therefore, I pointed you back to what God inspired, the parent document.

I did not lie. You have plainly told us that the Gen 1 order (animals before man) is incorrect because God really created animals after man (cf 2:19). This is not a matter of literal vs. non-literal. It is matter of clear and plain speech. We are not discussing whether the animals are real animals or spiritual things or whatever else. We are discussing the plainly enumerated order of creation.

So if it doesn't matter, why not accept that God told the truth about the order in both 1 and 2 and that your understanding of chapter 2 was wrong? That is the easiest solution. I came to it long ago when I first encountered this issue. Fortunately, it was an easy issue to solve.

How did he get there with an English Bible? What island is he on? Is it tropical or arctic? Does he have sufficient food and supplies??? Why don't you answer all these irrelevant questions as well?????

The reality is that you can sit down with your English Bible and reconcile the passages very easily. 2:19 in most English translations uses a past tense (God created). It does not give us a time frame for that creation and it does not connect it with the creation of man. Hebrew aside, a past tense creation in 2:19 could very well be in teh past long enough to predate the creation of man. There is no problem. The problem is your own understanding.

Your point has been disproven on every single issue you have raised.

 

Hi Pastor Larry,

How do you know what intention the ancient writer had?

From studying ancient literary devices, detecting these devices in the text, and deciphering such devices. One such device is parallelism.

How do YOU know what intention the ancient writer had? Do you have some special esoteric gnosis that we aren't priveleged to bear?

Every word used in Gen 1 indicates a literal usage.

And that is your presumption, but it is not true from a historical-critical standpoint. If I said, "The sun rose this morning," and someone read my words 3,000 years from now, they can say, "Every word Carson wrote indicates a literal usage for he said: 'The sun rose this morning'".

In no way can you make such a blanket presumption as this, Pastor Larry, for mythopoeic literature doesn't say "this is mythopoeic genre" within the text any more than it says "this is to be taken literally" within the text.

You're making grand assumptions and stating them as fact as your point of departure. I recognize that these are not ipso facto realities, and that they are just as much of an assumption as what you blame me for approaching the text with. Rather, I approach the text with a historical-critical study of the text in its historical setting, not anachronistically as a Fundamentalist would have his way.

The point is that you have to believe what your church tells you to believe, unless you are going to abandon the catechism.

Of course I have to believe what the Church proposes as dogmas of faith. I no longer have the liberty to interpret Christ's sonship as metaphorical as Arius did (and modern-day JW's, Christadelphians, etc. do). I no longer have the liberty to interpret Scripture as to believe that the Divine Word supplanted the human soul of Christ as Apollinarius did. I no longer have the liberty to exclude 2 & 3 John from my canon of the Bible and accept the Didache as inspired Scripture as so many Christians did in the Early Church. I no longer have the liberty to believe that the distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely nominal (in name only) as a monophysite.

You are correct. I am bound to the Church's authoritative interpretation of Scripture, when such interpretations have been made. I must supplant my weak and darkened intellect with the weak and darkened intellects of those who hold positions of authority in God's ecclesia. And the liberty it provides!

Bible speaks of "how," no matter how imprecise it is, it cannot be inaccurate.

Reading the Creation narrative as a mythopoeic account no more says that it is inaccurate as interpreting "It's raining cats and dogs" as "It's raining really hard" says that "It's raining cats and dogs" is inaccurate.

Your presumption of a genre entailing literal prose is what forces the need of blaming the text for inaccuracy, and it is this presumption, which is in error first and foremost.

Why not just let the text stand as it does?

I certainly let the text stand as it does and for what it is. M.G. Kline's framework hypothesis demonstrates that the author of Genesis was a literary genius, and his hypothesis has the most explanatory power I have come across with regard to interpretations of the Creation account. It draws out the deep and profound covenantal imagery inherently ladden within the Creation account (Both Gen 1 & 2), and shows - quite explosively - incredible theological insights, which the ancient author imbues within the text through common ancient Israelite literary devices.

 

Nope ... you know his intention by the words that he used. That is my point. You look for intention in things that cannot be determined (i.e., what might hvae been in his mind). You should be looking for his intention in things that can be determined, like the words that he used. Your attempt to show this as mythopaeic literature falls short of anything besides speculation. My position requires no speculation. It requires only reading the words that he used in their context. More on this shortly.

You are incorrect here. The word YOM, as used in Genesis 1, only ever means 24 hour periods. It never means anything else. If it means long periods of time, or a mere framework, then this is the only 7 uses of it this way in Scripture, that is 7 out of several thousand. If the author intended anything other than 24 hour periods, he would have used different words, based on the objective evidence, rather than a "framework hypothesis." Your position depends on that hypothesis being true even though there is nothing objective to back it up. My position has the objectivity of every single use of YOM in Scripture.

Actually this provides a great opportunity to prove my point. IN 3000 years, that person would have to look back at the word "rose" and particularly how that word was used in connection with "sun." There are certainly enough instances for that person to see that "sun rose" does not refer to a type of flower. Nor does it refer to the movement of the sun. They can very easily tell from its standard usage that it refers to morning, particularly as it revolves around the earth.

IN the same way, to determine what "YOM" meant in Genesis 1, we must go to that time period and observe the way that YOM is used in connection with the grammar of chapter 1. When we do that, there is only one conclusion: YOM, as it is used in Gen 1, only ever means a 24 hour period. It never means anything else. Determining that did not take a great amount of speculation about genres; it did not take speculation about intent. It required only looking at the way that the word is typically used.

So your illustration proves my point.

You are incorrect here. I am the one approaching it historically. I am trying to get you to do that. I am trying to get you to study the historical use of YOM. I wish you would. When you study this word out in its usage in Gen 1, you will see what I am talking about. The fundamentalist is not anachronistic. You are the one trying to interpret YOM based on modern day principles of theory. I am trying to get you to interpret it on the basis of Scripture. Therein lies the difference. You assume that Scripture cannot mean 24 hour days because of what modern authors say (therefore you ignore the historical context of the usage of YOM). I assert that it must mean 24 hour days because of hte historical context of the author's time period.

In so doing, I have made no assumptions. I have proven everything I have said from the text itself. The only assumption it requires from me is that words mean things. Your assumptions requires that historical usage be placed aside, the modern speculations be asserted on teh same (or higher) level as the biblical text, and that the historical usage of hte biblical text can and should be put aside in favor of modern writers. I reject those assumptions. My position requires only the assumption that words mean things. From there, we approach an objective study about how this word was used. It requires no speculation. You can look up the uses of the word and see for yourself.

I have not presumed a genre entailing anything. I have presumed that words mean things. A text should be understood as it was written. You speculate that it is mythopaeic, in spite of the fact that there is absolutely nothing in the text to indicate that. That is poor scholarship of the worst sort. That is a mockery of dedicated study. You cannot simply assert your ideas onto the text. You must read the text for itself. I do not force inaccuracy on the text. If it your side that is doing that. I am assuming the accuracy of the text.

But this is all speculation. Kline has nothing objective on which to base this ... nothing at all. His is a hypothesis that demands that we ignore the historical context and the historical usage of the words. That is simply unacceptable.

You should familiarize yourself with Gerhard Hasel's article on this topic in Origins vol 21, 1994 (5-38). He deals with this topic. It will be worth your time. As he says, Scripture has an integrity of meaning of itself that cannot be compromised by the changing hypotheses of men's ideas. In the end, this issue rests on our view of the integrity of the words of Scripture. We do not deny non-literal usage. We affirm that the text does have non-literal usage. But we affirm that in such cases, the text indicates a non-literal usage. We asser that the presumption is on the side of the literal, until the text points to something else. In this case, the text has pointed to nothing else. Therefore, we must reject Kline's hypothesis as merely that ... a hypothesis. There are simply better options.

 

Hi Pastor Larry,

You should be looking for his intention in things that can be determined, like the words that he used.

And that is precisely what I am doing. Your accusation that I am not is a misrepresentation of my approach to the text.

The word YOM, as used in Genesis 1, only ever means 24 hour periods.

I have absolutely no quarrel with you. Certainly, the author meant to designate a 24-hour period; that is not even of question. I'm not advocating the day-age view in any way.

It is through describing creation of the cosmos as 6 consecutive 24-hour periods that the author is able to convey his ingenius covenantal theology.

In 3000 years, that person would have to look back at the word "rose" and particularly how that word was used in connection with "sun."

That is the precise study that Historical-Critical scholars undertake when approaching the Genesis narrative.

A text should be understood as it was written.

Precisely.

You speculate that it is mythopaeic

That's "mythopoeic". This is "how" ancient authors narrated history. They did not write history as we do - concerned as we are with strict chronology from an empirical, scientific standpoint. It is your presumption and demand that the author be recording history as we do in our post-Enlightenement historical mindset that you take to the text.

If you are unaware of your philosophical lens, then you're unaware of your own blindness when you read literature composed by an individual with an entirely different mindset than your own.. namely, an ancient Israelite.

But this is all speculation. Kline has nothing objective on which to base this

Yes, he does: the text itself! Your rendering of the text is just as much hypothesis as Kline's is because you hypothesize that the author is rendering an empirical account of exactly how God created the world based upon your assumption that the author is recording history as we would have it (or rather, as the Fundamentalist would have it).

Attached to the text is the "purpose and mindset" of the author. This is inescapable, and it can only be ascertained by a study of ancient historians - a study I undertook in my Biblical Foundations graduate course.

 

While our RC bretheren "enjoy" the "you speculate and I counter-speculate" game - they avoid the "text" itself "religiously".

God Himself summarized the Genesis 1-2:3 "account" in Exodus 20:8-11. Expect our RC bretheren to avoid "God's summary" --- "religiously".

Observe the thread - notice how often they consider "God's Exodus 20:8-11 summary" of that SAME Genesis 1-2:3 to merit mention over "their own speculation"???

Very instructive. A copy of the thread would be most helpful for future reference to that glaring fact.

In Christ,

Bob