Re: Experimental Proof of the Effectiveness of Prayer for Health, Safety and Longevit

At 12:50 AM 12/10/2004 -0400, ed babinski wrote, and I erase his writing:

It strikes me, that more attention is being paid to the people who wrote
the Bible at a certain time, that to the original hearers. The Bible parts
were originally spoken and written for an audience that did not know 20th
and 21st science. God spoke through them to an audience living at that
time, even when we may learn a lot from those writings, as long as we do
not want to learn 21st science out of it. The audience at that time needed
to hear God's Word at that time, spoken in a language they understood. One
of the minor difficulties is that we know that language only in a very
limited way, resulting in an imperfect translation, More important is that
speaking in modern English or its equivalent would not be understood.

I believe in a Faithful, loving God who spoke to people 4000 years ago in a
language they understood. God was "true", "faithful" to them when teaching
them in a way they understood. Bur, it was still God's Word they
heard. And God did not want to teach them geography, or biology, or even
language. He just wanted to be their faithful God. And now He wants us to
be His faithful followers, accepting His Word, as HIs Word, while we may
have to take certain things into account, because God gave us more
knowledge about Geography, for example. If we really want to know the
Bible well for its talking to people in the past, we have as well a large
task in trying to learn how these people were living, and what they understood.

Translations try to do that, but if one reads the extensive studies about
Hebrew words like "nephesh", "ruach", "leeb", and how they are translated,
then one realizes that our translators assumed certain things not only
about the knowledge of the old people, but also about our knowledge of
things like our dual nature. My uncle showed in 1942 in a study comparing
the Egyptian hieroglyphics with the biblical writing, that the numbers
,mentioned in the Bible about the Exodus could not be correct. He
mentioned several reasons, but one was, that the excavation showed the size
of old Jericho, which was so small that it was not understandable that they
would even try to fight against the huge Israeli army described in the
Bible. But that does not mean, that we should now not study God's Word
written to people of that time. It is still meant for us, and we better
listen, as long as we do not want to learn modern Biology, or Geography, or
etc. from it. That we still have to do by reading God's Word in
nature. I know it makes studying even more necessary, but it prevents our
reading things which God did not mean to tell in the Bible, but for which
He used nature.

Jan de Koning
Received on Wed Oct 13 19:36:24 2004