At 07:04 PM 17/02/02 -0500, Walter Hicks wrote:
>Anyhow, I still feel that those on this list lean over backwards to
>avoid giving the Bible any slack whatsoever. The absolutely last thing
>to be considered by most is that it is inspired by God and may have more
>to it than just an interesting story made up by people to fit their
>culture and taken from the myths of others. I have tried searching for
>these related myths and cannot find anything like Genesis 1. You guys
>even argue about whether a nut may have been considered to be a fruit by
>the early Jews. I think that sort of discussion is totally off the wall.
>
>Could we just consider for a moment the possibility that most of the
>Bible really was inspired by God? Let's make believe for a moment that
>it is some 4000 (or name your number) years ago and God told Moses or
>somebody else who told Moses. Imagine him stumbling down the mountain
>trying to figure out what this explanation of the Creation of the
>universe meant and how to explain it to others.
>
>I can easily envision Genesis 1 as the result. Imperfect, but containing
>an amazing number of features which "hold water" today. Sure you can
>pick at scientific details -- but it was told as history (God's History
>of His creation) not science.
Walt,
I feel that you do not understand, what we are saying. So, I for myself
will repeat once more what I said. The whole bible, including Genesis 1
and other parts of Scripture we talked about, is inspired by God. I don't
know what you mean with "holds water" but God certainly did nor inspire
people, who lived 4000 years ago, to write in our "scientific" or even in
any modern language. God used people like Moses to tell His people at that
time, that He created systematically, so that what we discover in Creation
is there coming from Him.
The Bible is there for specialists and non-specialists, for people who went
to school, and for people who did not go to school, for North-Americans,
and for Central-Asians. If God had used the language we are using on this
forum hardly anybody would have understood it. But God had Moses (?) write
down in a form, which we recognize as not true in a literal North-American
form, but clear enough that we know that God created, and that man sinned
in not wanting to obey God. Try to imagine, which we cannot of course,
what Moses should have written down to satisfy the needs of people 4000
years ago, and now. The Bible is not a science book. God's Truth (truth,
troth points to faithfulness) means that He loves us and will take care of us.
A minor point is that "time" is created as well as "space". So trying to
fit everything in our "four" dimensional life is impossible. We do not
know what heaven is, but we know heaven will come down to earth when Jesus
returns. We know that eternal life is promised to us, but we have no idea
what "eternity" means. We are force to live in our present time and space.
Jan de K.
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