Hi Glenn, you wrote:
>Exactly where do you derive that eastward is to be measured from the Sinai?
Well, the Mediterranean basin is only east of the Atlantic Ocean. Are you
suggesting that the writer of Genesis was using an oceanic reference point?
>>Genesis places the
>>garden of Eden near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates. So do I.
>>Glenn places it in the Mediterranean basin.
>At the former junction of the Tigris and Euphrates--Dick you know this.
The Euphrates river would have to flow over two mountain ranges from its
present source to get to the Mediterranean. The Hiddekel (Tigris)
originates in the region of Assyria, flowing southeast until it joins the
Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia at a point that is east of Assyria, just
as stated in the Bible. The Mediterranean basin is west according to any
map I have seen. Also, Daniel stood beside the Hiddekel in Daniel 10:4.
Where would you say he was standing? In Turkey? Greece? That would be a
long trek for the armies of Persia that the angel talks about in the same
chapter.
>> Genesis says Adam was created
>>out of the dust. So do I. Glenn says Adam had natural parents who were
>>apes.
>Our bodies show numerous similarities to the apes both morphologically and
>chemically. I would suggest that your view makes God out to be a deceiver
>who created us to look like the apes, with even broken pseudogenes and all,
>when we aren't related to them. To me that says bad things about your view
>of God.
You and I are in full agreement that human beings have brachiators swinging
on our family tree. We won't argue about that at all. But what I am
saying is this. Genesis was written for the children of Israel. It is
about their walk with God, their failings, their triumphs, their history,
their beginnings. It is not about the beginnings of humanity as we somehow
have come to believe.
We Christians made one small mistake. We knew that Adam was the father of
the Jews, the Arabs, the Armenians and some others. We knew he was the
first type of Christ, the first man to have a covenant relationship with
God, and that he was the first to sin and suffer consequences. But we also
thought that Adam was the first mammalian biped with an opposable thumb and
a cranial capacity of 1400 to 1500 cubic centimeters. He was not. His
entry was too late for that.
Adam’s mission apparently was to make the world aware that we had a loving,
caring, heavenly Father. Adam was a man, created in the image of God, who
would have brought mankind into a relationship with the Creator. But we
thought Adam was created to people the planet. We tried to draw our four
million year-old family tree beginning with a man who lived about 7,000
years ago! No matter how you draw it, it doesn’t work. And this has been
the common mistake of Christian apologists down through the centuries -
including this one we just started.
>My views are a bit better than your brief characature would lead one to
>believe.
My brevity was not intended to slight you. My apologies, Glenn. But Burgy
had expressed a preference for your method of apology over mine. I want to
see if he is prepared to live with the liabilities.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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