Jim wrote,
<< Hugh Ross mentions that the Enuma Elish "departs from fact (or testability)
at several points, including these:
1. It places the creation of man before the creation of animals, large and
small.
2. It tells of a saltwater ocean and a freshwater ocean coexisting (that is,
in contact with one another) prior to the creation of land"
pg 60-61, The Genesis Question
I tend to be an "action" guy, Paul. I find it distasteful when Christians
point out the similarites between Gen 1 and Enuma elish instead of the
similarities of Gen 1 and the truth (or at least normal science). This is,
of course, not in any way a criticism of your post. This is a topic worth
discussing. But what next? >>
Let's not lose sight of the point. You made the order of the events in Gen 1
a sign of its divine origin, saying to Michael, "THERE IS SIMPLY A STUNNING
SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE CHRONOLOGY OF GEN 1 AND SCIENCE AS WE KNOW IT." You
wrote to Loren, "I challenge you to show me another creation account that
gets the sequence of events correct." The fact that Enuma elish has
essentially the same order of events as Gen 1 has shows that the order of
events is not a proof of divine origin. Of course, only within the walls of
concordism, cut off as it is both from the history of the Church and the
consensus of biblical scholarship--conservative and liberal, does anyone
think the order of events is the same as in normal science anyway; but, that
is another story.
The observations of Hugh Ross regarding E.E. are not compelling. E.E. does
not place the creation of man before the creation of animals. It skips "Day
5," the creation of animals. This omission does not change the fact that the
order of events is essentially the same as in Genesis.
EE may be saying that salt and fresh water coexisted before the earth was
made, but this is not really clear in EE. Apsu is fresh water. But, when
Teammate is cut in two and half of her water is placed above the sky, that
water is probably fresh---to fall as rain. The water that is beneath her
(when she is formed into the flat earth) comes out of her eyes as the
Euphrates and the Tigris, which again is fresh water. So on what basis is her
water called salt water?
Perhaps, our differences come down to what is most distasteful to us. You
find it distasteful to compare Gen 1 to EE rather than to science---after Gen
1 has been fixed by concords to agree with science. I find it distasteful to
abandon the historical-grammatical meanings of Gen 1 in favor of meanings
that by virtue of their departure from the understanding of the historic
Church and from modern scholarship as well can only be regarded as cultic.
Christians have an obligation to bear light, to uphold truth---not create
imaginary worlds of their own, whether by way of creation science or by
concordism.
We can agree on this: the theology of Gen 1 is superior to that in EE.
Paul
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