Genesis

GBzone said:
I am reminded of those misguided people who researched the times of the Bible and came up with that the earth began on (say) July 15th x number of years ago.
Or in the other direction the Lord is coming on (say) September 21st 2010..
"so called science " is but trying to do much the same.
in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

Please accept my thanks for explaining things. I don't know if I will be able to digest what you have said on the various threads.

I do wonder if ideas come and go, and mostly we don't remember when they came or if they went. My mother's father has a sort of explanation for that could be. He got it from, Mr Wooden, the principal of his high school. Mr Wooden had a brother, John Wooden, who was a star basketball player at Purdue University almost 100 years ago. His motto was "Nobody remembers second place."

Bruce Jenner, the Kardashian stepfather, won an Olympic Gold Medal. Who won the silver?

Kepler had an idea about how regularly shaped solids are somehow related to planetary motion. Brahe argued that because he could not observe perturbation in stars, Earth must be the center of planetary motion.

The most quoted forgotten theory, The Flat Earth, probably never was a theory. Educated people have always believed that the Earth is round.

Or since ideas are forgotten, we have no way of knowing what they were or if they have been forgotten.
 
When they say, "nothing is new, under the sun" they mean that somebody, somewhere thought of that too. That doesn't mean that there are no eternal truths, nor does it mean what we think of as scientific facts, today, isn't subject to that eternal truth tomorrow.
 
Ghid said:
Please accept my thanks for explaining things. I don't know if I will be able to digest what you have said on the various threads.

I do wonder if ideas come and go, and mostly we don't remember when they came or if they went. My mother's father has a sort of explanation for that could be. He got it from, Mr Wooden, the principal of his high school. Mr Wooden had a brother, John Wooden, who was a star basketball player at Purdue University almost 100 years ago. His motto was "Nobody remembers second place."

Bruce Jenner, the Kardashian stepfather, won an Olympic Gold Medal. Who won the silver?

Kepler had an idea about how regularly shaped solids are somehow related to planetary motion. Brahe argued that because he could not observe perturbation in stars, Earth must be the center of planetary motion.

The most quoted forgotten theory, The Flat Earth, probably never was a theory. Educated people have always believed that the Earth is round.

Or since ideas are forgotten, we have no way of knowing what they were or if they have been forgotten.
Click to expand...

Not sure how that applies . But that fact is that 'education' as you put it was in the hands of mostly the priests and so was the Bible . It was not until the reformation principally that both the Bible and education became more widespread.
That most of Europe believed that the earth was flat is indisputable by their actions of never going to far out to sea and out of the sight of land for too long or at all.
Why they thought that ;perhaps you would have to look at those who insisted that the sun revolved around the earth and threatened death to any who suggested otherwise .
in Christ
gerald
 
GBzone said:
Not sure how that applies . But that fact is that 'education' as you put it was in the hands of mostly the priests and so was the Bible . It was not until the reformation principally that both the Bible and education became more widespread.
That most of Europe believed that the earth was flat is indisputable by their actions of never going to far out to sea and out of the sight of land for too long or at all.
Why they thought that ;perhaps you would have to look at those who insisted that the sun revolved around the earth and threatened death to any who suggested otherwise .
in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

Well, anyone who had read Ptolemy would have believed that the earth is round.

One of the things on my bucket list is to learn enough math to be able to read Ptolemy. I think that he must have recorded evidence that would have led him to have put the sun at the center. (And of course the sun is not at the center in the geometric sense of the word.) Modern science books say that Moon's rotation is out of sync with its phases. If, hidden in Ptolemy's mass of numbers, he had recorded that information, he might have used it to argue for a solar centric model.

The geocentric theory of planetary motion is an example of second place that has not been forgotten. Maybe it has not been forgotten because it is not wrong, it is just not quite right. Like biogenesis in Genesis 1 or Newton's Laws of motion, they are just not quite right.

And the fact that geocentricity has not been forgotten makes me wonder if the Church's fight with Galileo has a more general lesson, which could be that people who deal in non-disprovable ideas should not deal also in disprovable ideas.

However, people who deal in disprovable ideas, must have a few nondisprovable ideas. I said that to an atheist, materialist friend. He said: How do you know? Who told you that? And I said: Well, it is my idea, but it is so obvious, how could I be the first to have thought of it.

If I could read Alain Badiou or Simone de Beauvoir and if I could understand anything they wrote, I might find an explanation of how they deal with the nondisaprovability of ideas.

Does how to deal with
Nondisprovablity
Divide the world be- …
 
Genesis the story of creation?

The creation of ...
fear of the power of a tyrant
fear of dying without a son,
anger about a second wife,
anger about of a birthright
sadness an unloved wife
joy of reunion of family
joy of seduction of a boyfriend
anger over the rape of a sister
fear of revenge for murder
anger about sibling rivalry
sadness of the loss of a son
joy about the recovery of a lost son.

And other miscellaneous trashy stories.:)
 
Ghid said:
Well, anyone who had read Ptolemy would have believed that the earth is round.

One of the things on my bucket list is to learn enough math to be able to read Ptolemy. I think that he must have recorded evidence that would have led him to have put the sun at the center. (And of course the sun is not at the center in the geometric sense of the word.) Modern science books say that Moon's rotation is out of sync with its phases. If, hidden in Ptolemy's mass of numbers, he had recorded that information, he might have used it to argue for a solar centric model.

The geocentric theory of planetary motion is an example of second place that has not been forgotten. Maybe it has not been forgotten because it is not wrong, it is just not quite right. Like biogenesis in Genesis 1 or Newton's Laws of motion, they are just not quite right.

And the fact that geocentricity has not been forgotten makes me wonder if the Church's fight with Galileo has a more general lesson, which could be that people who deal in non-disprovable ideas should not deal also in disprovable ideas.

However, people who deal in disprovable ideas, must have a few nondisprovable ideas. I said that to an atheist, materialist friend. He said: How do you know? Who told you that? And I said: Well, it is my idea, but it is so obvious, how could I be the first to have thought of it.

If I could read Alain Badiou or Simone de Beauvoir and if I could understand anything they wrote, I might find an explanation of how they deal with the nondisaprovability of ideas.

Does how to deal with
Nondisprovablity
Divide the world be- …
Click to expand...

Why is it that if a person 'answers ' an objection that they then do not continue from that?
For you ignore the fact of my argument .That in the main most people were not educated and deliberately kept so. Both about Biblical truth and all other matters.
That the Bible and much else of learning was held in the hands of the priests and hidden away in monasteries . One reason why it was called the dark ages.
Ignorance both spiritual and natural..
Both of which was removed at the reformation . First by the spiritual then the natural.
For God always brings light before he does any work.

in Christ
gerald
 
When I was a child, I understood Genesis differently. I wondered where Cain and Abel got their wives, how Noah fit all those animals on the ark, why Joseph forgave his brothers for selling him into slavery and why there were nephilim seed/giants around after the flood. I also had a problem with time but I separate this only because I have started to see but I don't have it down like the earlier questions. I also don't see Genesis as Ghid posted in #106. In my scriptural researches....I have found that man was a lot more knowledgeable than we give credit and the world then was way different than it is today. God altered things to benefit man's ultimate redemption.
 
GBzone said:
Why is it that if a person 'answers ' an objection that they then do not continue from that?
For you ignore the fact of my argument .That in the main most people were not educated and deliberately kept so. Both about Biblical truth and all other matters.
That the Bible and much else of learning was held in the hands of the priests and hidden away in monasteries . One reason why it was called the dark ages.
Ignorance both spiritual and natural..
Both of which was removed at the reformation . First by the spiritual then the natural.
For God always brings light before he does any work.

in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

Well yes, I suppose that ignorance is a normal thing, especially in modern society, which has become a world of information overkill.
 
Ghid said:
Well yes, I suppose that ignorance is a normal thing, especially in modern society, which has become a world of information overkill.
Click to expand...

One way to hide the truth is to flood the world with lies .

It is becoming more apparent that the world and so called science has a long way to catch up with scripture .
Indeed with Gods creation itself .
The Japanese are world renown for their miniaturisation . But if you look at the little red spider that is commonly called the money spider .They are but beginners in comparison with God .
If you look at all the skillful packaging of products and their design .They are but little children when you compare the packaging of a leaf or a rose .Or indeed a seed.
The heavens indeed "declare the glory of God and His handiwork"
and does it not say somewhere that the stars speak or sing? But are not heard? Is it only recently that they have just begun to realise that stars and indeed some planets vibrate and 'sing' or resonate with their own voice?
and what about those "fountains of the deep " as mentioned in the account of Noah. It puzzled me for a long time how you have fountains of water under the sea. Untill I saw the programme "the blue planet " with David Atenborough .Who took a submersible a mile down and there they were .

in Christ
gerald
 
GBzone said:
One way to hide the truth is to flood the world with lies .

It is becoming more apparent that the world and so called science has a long way to catch up with scripture .
Indeed with Gods creation itself .
The Japanese are world renown for their miniaturisation . But if you look at the little red spider that is commonly called the money spider .They are but beginners in comparison with God .
If you look at all the skillful packaging of products and their design .They are but little children when you compare the packaging of a leaf or a rose .Or indeed a seed.
The heavens indeed "declare the glory of God and His handiwork"
and does it not say somewhere that the stars speak or sing? But are not heard? Is it only recently that they have just begun to realise that stars and indeed some planets vibrate and 'sing' or resonate with their own voice?
and what about those "fountains of the deep " as mentioned in the account of Noah. It puzzled me for a long time how you have fountains of water under the sea. Untill I saw the programme "the blue planet " with David Atenborough .Who took a submersible a mile down and there they were .

in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

Oh, I forgot to say: Welcome to CFS.
 
GBzone said:
One way to hide the truth is to flood the world with lies .

It is becoming more apparent that the world and so called science has a long way to catch up with scripture .
Indeed with Gods creation itself .
The Japanese are world renown for their miniaturisation . But if you look at the little red spider that is commonly called the money spider .They are but beginners in comparison with God .
If you look at all the skillful packaging of products and their design .They are but little children when you compare the packaging of a leaf or a rose .Or indeed a seed.
The heavens indeed "declare the glory of God and His handiwork"
and does it not say somewhere that the stars speak or sing? But are not heard? Is it only recently that they have just begun to realise that stars and indeed some planets vibrate and 'sing' or resonate with their own voice?
and what about those "fountains of the deep " as mentioned in the account of Noah. It puzzled me for a long time how you have fountains of water under the sea. Untill I saw the programme "the blue planet " with David Atenborough .Who took a submersible a mile down and there they were .

in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

I think that Genesis is only accidentally about creation of the cosmos. It is naturally about creation of family. From a Catholic point of view, Genesis 1:28 suggests that we should have family, and holy cowabugna bygolly, the rest of Genesis tells the trashy, soap opera of one man's family. It is a family like my family, full of malcontents and screw ups, and like in my family, the bad boys have most of the fun.

My father's father, who is one of the screw-ups, took my mother to Santa Anita. She bet on Wild Kitty, and holy moly Red Rider, Wild Kitty won.

He took my grandmother to Hollywood Park. She bet on Rubber Ducky, a nag which never got out of the barn.

He took me to a liquor store. A Mexican asked the proprietor for Caballo Blanco Whiskey. My grandfather, the expert on all things alcoholic, stopped reading the Racing Form long enough to translate, "The Mexican really wants White Horse Whiskey."

A few years later, my father's sister became my little sister when my father's father and his current live-in girlfriend went to jail.

OMG, holy cowabunga, I don't need to go into the world to find sin, and I gotta ask, why would I give a holy-flying-flip about whether or not oceanographers have found any "fountains of the great deep" when the important information is about family?

I don't think that the glory of god is hidden. Cowabunga, jeeper-crow, Google brings the last detail of almost all creation to my computer. Anyone who has any interest in God can bring that information to his or her desk.
 
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Ghid said:
I think that Genesis is only accidentally about creation of the cosmos. It is naturally about creation of family. From a Catholic point of view, Genesis 1:28 suggests that we should have family, and holy cowabugna bygolly, the rest of Genesis tells the trashy, soap opera of one man's family. It is a family like my family, full of malcontents and screw ups, and like in my family, the bad boys have most of the fun.

My father's father, who is one of the screw-ups, took my mother to Santa Anita. She bet on Wild Kitty, and holy moly Red Rider, Wild Kitty won.

He took my grandmother to Hollywood Park. She bet on Rubber Ducky, a nag which never got out of the barn.

He took me to a liquor store. A Mexican asked the proprietor for Caballo Blanco Whiskey. My grandfather, the expert on all things alcoholic, stopped reading the Racing Form long enough to translate, "The Mexican really wants White Horse Whiskey."

A few years later, my father's sister became my little sister when my father's father and his current live-in girlfriend went to jail.

OMG, holy cowabunga, I don't need to go into the world to find sin, and I gotta ask, why would I give a holy-flying-flip about whether or not oceanographers have found any "fountains of the great deep" when the important information is about family?

I don't think that the glory of god is hidden. Cowabunga, jeeper-crow, Google brings the last detail of almost all creation to my computer. Anyone who has any interest in God can bring that information to his or her desk.
Click to expand...

It is teaching far more than a family.
Nor can you call it a trashy soap opera considering the consequences of not taking seriously those teachings .
We are called to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God.
To be BORN again is but the beginning of a new life not the be all and end all of it.
Even as being born into this life is but the beginning not the end of it .
We are hopefully born into a loving family of this life .
If we are BORN again not only are we grafted into a family tree of far longer origins but of a family if you will that will not pass away and in spiritual terms has more or greater precedence over our 'natural' family.

in Christ
gerald
 
GBzone said:
It is teaching far more than a family.
Nor can you call it a trashy soap opera considering the consequences of not taking seriously those teachings .
We are called to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God.
To be BORN again is but the beginning of a new life not the be all and end all of it.
Even as being born into this life is but the beginning not the end of it .
We are hopefully born into a loving family of this life .
If we are BORN again not only are we grafted into a family tree of far longer origins but of a family if you will that will not pass away and in spiritual terms has more or greater precedence over our 'natural' family.

in Christ
gerald
Click to expand...

Well yes indeedy-do, the Bible teaches “far more than a family.” That is sort of the point. The Bible is about sin and salvation, not about cosmology and geology.

Now look back through this thread and look for words like grace, born again, and Jesus. One poster uses the words, grace and born again. Initially some of us talked about Jesus, but mostly the posting have been about sins of the family members of Adam to Joseph.

I’m the only one here who uses the words, trashy novel, to describe Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, and Judges. I use those words because the Bible stories remind me of that famous story about a young woman, Anna, (like pharaoh’s wife, or possibly Sarah) in love with a handsome young man. She has an elderly husband (maybe like Pharaoh or Abraham) and a son. She doesn’t leave the husband because he would take the child. The novel has a parallel story about, Dolly, Anna’s sister-in-law, who is married to Anna’s unfaithful brother (like Judah). There is a third story line about Kitty, who is something like Dinah in the Bible.

Trashy novels always have women like Anna, Dolly, and Kitty, like the Bible has Leah, Dinah and Tamar. They are full of the human emotions and situations.

Genesis does have information about salvation, but that information is hidden from the average reader. So seems to me that Genesis tells the trashy story of the sins of one man’s family.

And it is something like a soap opera. :)
 
Ghid said:
Well yes indeedy-do, the Bible teaches “far more than a family.” That is sort of the point. The Bible is about sin and salvation, not about cosmology and geology.

Now look back through this thread and look for words like grace, born again, and Jesus. One poster uses the words, grace and born again. Initially some of us talked about Jesus, but mostly the posting have been about sins of the family members of Adam to Joseph.

I’m the only one here who uses the words, trashy novel, to describe Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, and Judges. I use those words because the Bible stories remind me of that famous story about a young woman, Anna, (like pharaoh’s wife, or possibly Sarah) in love with a handsome young man. She has an elderly husband (maybe like Pharaoh or Abraham) and a son. She doesn’t leave the husband because he would take the child. The novel has a parallel story about, Dolly, Anna’s sister-in-law, who is married to Anna’s unfaithful brother (like Judah). There is a third story line about Kitty, who is something like Dinah in the Bible.

Trashy novels always have women like Anna, Dolly, and Kitty, like the Bible has Leah, Dinah and Tamar. They are full of the human emotions and situations.

Genesis does have information about salvation, but that information is hidden from the average reader. So seems to me that Genesis tells the trashy story of the sins of one man’s family.

And it is something like a soap opera. :)
Click to expand...

In soap operas there are no lasting consequences. People murder lie cheat commit adultery and all the rest and its like water off a ducks back. The soap just goes on and all in it . More or less unless some one has to leave the programme.
If there is a family it is that of mankind.
And the consequences of Adams disobedience and doing loving Eve more than God and Eve doing that which was good in her own eyes . Was not only death for them but also for the whole family made subject to it .
We are still living with the consequences of it as the Jews are with their bad decision. 2000 years ago.
Life is not a soap opera .
Grace and BORNagain are two very different things . Though one led to the other and the other cannot be obtained without it .
To use terms like trashy novel neither helps you or anybody else that would accept that idea of the accounts in the Bible. I would not use stories as that may seem not unlike a novel to some(?)
They were not in a soap .They were real people making good and bad decisions .Recorded in the mercy of God that we may see the consequences of both decisions and avoid the the one and do the other .
A soap is a mesmerising voyistic programme that has people making another sort of decision .To waste their time and life watching such programes that are full of the worlds ways and nothing of Gods.

If the salvation of God is hidden "to most" I would suggest it is because these things are no longer preached . Indeed one gets the impression that half(?) the church does not believe God in these things anyway. Why that should be is another matter .Perhaps they are listening to the wrong message.
The result or consequences of that are all around us . if the church does not believe God what hope the world ?

in Christ
gerald
 
I never got into soaps but they are cliches, today for anything of drama, for drama, to leave you hanging. Most channels don't carry them anymore, do they? Except for the soap channel. ( which runs? reruns). Pretty much anything good, bad or indifferent that humans can do is found in the bible stories. Never much got into romance novels either and they are all mostly what I consider "trashy". Having said that, I have adored the grandmother of all romance novels, Gone With the Wind for most of my reading life. It's about the only book I remember reading more than once and that is mostly out of nostalgia for me. Totally different story with the Bible. Every time I reread, I see things I never saw before. I see different levels and the complexity is breath taking, as is the interweaving - scripture upon scripture uon scripture to the 10th power.
To me, Genesis is one of the most complex books and along with Revelation, show us the beginning and end. At different parts of my life, I saw and understood different thing. The bible has 66 books but only one real author, the Holy Spirit. Most people skip the begats but there is a wealth of information just in that. All of humanity sprang from Adam and Eve - so we are reading about all of our long ago ancestors and the route their children took. Our family, our inheritance. You didn't touch on the significance of the Tower of Babel but then there is a lot of stories to try and follow. Genesis tells us where our troubles started and how some kept following the wrong courses, even thru generations. Nimrod is of the cursed line of Ham. The 1st 9 patriachs names when translated spell out a story if you read what their names mean. What was true in the time of Noah, Jesus tells us, will be true before the 2nd Coming. Multiple levels, including geology, tell us different things. Pieces of the mystery we all want to know.
The trashy (grin) starts the read - the multiple levels of truth keep me going back.
 
Wow, Mr Silk and Mr Bzone, you guys have some cowabunga cool ideas, like you’re total Gandolphs with some major overhead. OMG, this could become total choka or even gnarly. I might get down and boogie, but I’ll need to take them one wave at a time.

When I said that that normal people reading Genesis would not know about salvation I was thinking two things, Genesis 3:15 and the begats of Genesis 5.

Scholars interpret Genesis 3:15 as a prediction of the coming of Jesus or Mary, but I think that a normal reader would not know that.

Also the list of names in the begats in Genesi 5 might be written

Adam seth enosh kenan. Mahalal! El yaradh enoch mathuselah lamech nacham.

Even though it makes no sense, it sounds kinda cool, when read with a Yiddish accent. The translation is:

Man causes mortality and sorrow. Ha ..lle … luuuu …… jah! God comes teaching. His death ... (pregnant pause) ... brings the poor comfort.

I think that Iron Age scribes would have seen these these begats as a prediction of salvation, but normal modern readers won’t know that.

Unless Genesis has more that suggests salvation, I don’t see how Genesis can be said to predict salvation.
 
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