Many times the last few weeks I see the word "truth", or "true" being used,
usually without any reference to the sense the word is being used. That
means that, probably, the modern sense of "truth" is meant. But is it the
biblical sense of "truth"? In English, the word has the same stem as
'troth" = "faithfulness", thus the meaning is not necessarily the same as
what we mean by (scientific) "truth".
It strikes me, that in many postings not enough attention is paid to the
fact that the early chapters of Genesis (1 - 11) were written in the first
place for a people who had no idea about scientific "truth." That means
that using Gen. 1 - 11 to obtain "scientific truth" means using the Bible
for non-biblical ideas. Of course, God did not tell people who were
nomads, whose knowledge of history was mainly through hearing stories from
parents, "scientifically verifyable" history. Also, as was pointed out,
"yom" does not necessarily mean "day", nor does "day", even in our time,
always mean "24 hours." My uncle showed in his study about the El Amarna
tablets and the OT (in Dutch, published in 1942), that numbers in the early
books of the Bible do not make sense in a modern sense. To illustrate that
he took the size of Jericho when Israel invaded Canaan. That size is
available through the excavations. He compared it with the number of men
that had to walk each day around the city, and the seventh day seven
times. That is clearly impossible, if we take the modern sense of the
numbers used. Even when we replace "thousand" by "clan" it appears to be
impossible. My uncle had no explanation. Also, has anyone ever seriously
considered the animals, large and small, in the ark, and said that it was
possible. To me it is clear that the writer of Genesis (maybe using other
stories going around in the Near East) is saying in these chapters, that
there is only one God, and you, people of God, must serve Him. These other
so-called Gods in the stories you heard around you, have proven to be no-gods.
Add to that Gen.1 is probably written as a song praising God for His
creation. And the following chapters are written to show that a creation
without wanting to serve the Maker of it all does not make sense, and is
sin. A sin which mankind since its very beginning committed. And still
commit. After all, don't we still think: "See the great empire WE, Modern
Man, created in the 20th century." And God says: "You think, that you
created? I will show you that there are things you have not even thought of."
I enjoyed the discussion, which showed that there are many things in
creation, which we don't know, and for which we do not have a generally
acceptable explanation.
Jan de Koning
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