I was just kidding, I didn’t mean that I thought you were. Everything we experience is an interpretation peculiar to us.
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Let’s be honest… that’s an oversimplification. Did Jacob wrestle with God and God had to cheat to win? It’s easy to take your position and run with it, but when you drill down to specifics, there are issues that must be dealt with. During the great famine, did people come from all over the entire planet to get grain in Egypt?
I am being honest when I tell you that I have always viewed the “days” of creation as being literal (they were used literally as regular days in the text) and also poetic (but they were not intended to show that these steps of creation took merely 12 or 24 hours.)
I respect your desire to maintain the integrity of scripture, but I think it is being unreasonable to not see a potentially viable alternative meaning. Can you at least respect the fact that I look at the same scriptures and this is what I see?
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“eretz” does not mean “planet” in all contexts. That’s why context is important.
(but they were not intended to show that these steps of creation took merely 12 or 24 hours.)
Where do you get this concept from the Bible itself?
Can you at least respect the fact that I look at the same scriptures and this is what I see?
I respect it but I also respectfully disagree.
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Right… and yom does not mean days in all contexts… So we can agree (respectfully, as you say) and move on.
Indirectly, because, as you say, context is important. You’re certainly familiar with the myriad issues over the activites performed each day. How it can be problematic to envision these things occuring in just 12-24 hours. The seventh day not ending is another good example. Clearly we’re not going to agree over these, but we should be able to see one another’s positions, right?
And why ignore my question about Jacob? The text actually says that Jacob wrestled with elohim. What about God makes any of us think that he would not know who Jacob was, struggle with him all night, need to depart before sunrise, and then cheat to win? Clearly this story does not mean what it says.
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I always loved this video
The Word of God
Lyrics and melody © 1994 by Catherine Faber
From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline. . .
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things—how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
Hang in there. I hope you turn out to be right and me wrong.
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How so? That was the consensus of the church for thousands of years; Augustine, outlier as he was, actually believed God created everything in an instant (even less time).
The seventh day not ending is another good example.
This is addressed here:
And why ignore my question about Jacob? The text actually says that Jacob wrestled with elohim. What about God makes any of us think that he would not know who Jacob was, struggle with him all night, need to depart before sunrise, and then cheat to win? Clearly this story does not mean what it says.
Just because you don’t know why God necessarily chose to engage in those actions does not imply that they didn’t, in fact, happen. Where would you go in the text to determine they were non-historical?
For the universe, yes this is a possibility but only for the first instant. Like Danny Faulkner says God could have worked a miracle and made distant starlight arrive here instantly. But now enter Hartnett to overlay the physical problems with that proposal. And Hartnett is correct here: the problem is not an instantaneous creation with distant starlight arriving instantly in our neighborhood, but rather the next wave of starlight after that initial instant. There is no way to continue receiving distant starlight without a continued miracle.
Since Faulkner and all YECs basically agree that those creation miracles ceased after Day 6, then as Hartnett well-pointed-out >> after Day 6, the sky would go dark for 14 billion years waiting on the next wave of distant light to arrive.
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The larger problem is that your interpretation of scripture completely contradicts scientific questions we have answered.
Did the Roman Catholic Church have to re-interpret the Bible once Heliocentrism became a well supported scientific conclusion? Yep, they sure did.
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Since you didn’t specify which verses I’ll just take a stab at the whole thing, but in chunks. Note, these are just off-the-cuff, I haven’t done a thorough study:
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
It’s worth doing theology, it’s worth digging into Scripture and working out what it means. Remember that this isn’t simply words on a page, it is divinely inspired and comes from God.
3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
While we wait in anticipation and hope for Christ to return, remember that God is in charge and he is faithful. Those who turn away from God will have a reckoning in due time.
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
While all the pain and suffering around us makes us want God to hurry up, we should remember that our purpose is to be the hands and feet of Jesus to others while we’re here. When it would seem like the world is hopeless, remind yourselves that your job is to bring the hope of Christ to those around you.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
Don’t worry about the “when”, remember that all will be made new.
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
What we say and do matters. As you look towards eternity remind yourselves of who you want to be, who you are becoming.
14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Make sure to focus on your relationship with God, don’t ignore him. Don’t read Scripture in isolation, it’s not always easy to understand. Make sure you do it justice and are open to a better or more accurate interpretation.
7 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
As you follow Christ, make sure you don’t just believe everything you hear. Test it and see if it brings you to a closer and fuller knowledge of Christ.
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I really didn’t want to slip back into talking past one another. I am not expecting you to agree, I’m expecting you to agree that there’s a viable alternative and that we all reserve the right to choose.
That it is addressed by you is certainly a viable option. That the days are not intended to be 24-hour days is too.
I did not say that they were not historical at all. What I did, similar to what you do repeatedly, is to cast doubt upon the literal meaning of the words as presented. You cannot pick and choose if you take a stand that everything that seems to be historical narrative in the book of Genesis is to be taken literally. If you are fine with Yahweh wrestling with Jacob for hours, not knowing who he was (Abraham’s grandson for crying out loud), needing to depart before sunrise, and having to cheat to win, so be it. But I for one do not accept that it is so. Furthermore, those scribes that added chapter headings hundreds of years later, also took issue with it, because many added headings that say “Jacob Wrestles with an Angel” instead. The text (Hebrew) does not say that he wrestled with an angel. It says he wrestled with elohim. Clearly, if this were God (Yahweh) this encounter would be unique in all of scripture. Nowhere does this kind of encounter occur.
Furthermore, that he just limps off without building some sort of memorial to his encounter with God is strange. It was common in scripture for characters who had significant encounters with God to build an altar in memory of it. So, then, the point is that one can look upon this story as one that is also very problematic if one has to take it literally.
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The text does not say God did not know who he was.
Furthermore, those scribes that added chapter headings hundreds of years later, also took issue with it, because many added headings that say “Jacob Wrestles with an Angel” instead. The text (Hebrew) does not say that he wrestled with an angel. It says he wrestled with elohim.
It says he wrestled with ‘a man’. But this man was also called God. So that would be a theophany - an incarnation.
Furthermore, that he just limps off without building some sort of memorial to his encounter with God is strange. It was common in scripture for characters who had significant encounters with God to build an altar in memory of it. So, then, the point is that one can look upon this story as one that is also very problematic if one has to take it literally.
Strange? Maybe. But the mere fact that an event is strange and leaves us with unanswered questions is no reason to say it didn’t really happen.
That make sense, but doesn’t it mean that there may be multiple ways to interpret what happened? I think that’s a lot of the point for OEC/TE folks. If there is enough stuff to cause us to have questions about the exact details, maybe we should hold on to our interpretations a bit more loosely as we go about our investigation.
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I think the best rule of thumb is to allow the text to interpret itself, as much as possible. Go with the historical-grammatical hermeneutic. To the best of our ability to understand, what was the author’s intended meaning? And look for how later Bible writers interpreted these earlier texts. That’s why 2 Peter 3 is so important.
It’s as though this video was made specifically for you:
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What happens when that method is contradicted by evidence from the creation?
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Then you need to question your interpretation of that evidence before you question the Bible.
What is the point of quoting this?
AND if you’re claiming to take it literally. After all, no two translations are literally the same.
Of course, it’s obvious that your hyper literalism is hyper selective.
I think that if one pontificates as you do, far more literary certainty is called for.
And I notice that you are inserting a whole bunch of interpretation with your judgment of which areas are “fundamental.”
I’m saying that since people disagree on translations (all are interpretations) in good faith, sincere literalism requires reading the text literally–in Hebrew.