If Eve was formed from Adam’s rib, wouldn’t Adam and Eve have exactly the same DNA? So where did XY and XX chromosomes come from then?
You forget, religious people think God is magic. So he magicked up some chromosomes. Why didn’t He just create Eve without going through the needless nonsense of pulling out a rib?
Hey, aren’t sunsets beautiful?
They’re more “iron age myths”, really…
The accepted version of creation is in the correct order, preparing a planet to accept living beings, man arriving when everything is complete. The confusion is that the King James version tells us that God made man and out of man came woman, this is at odds with Hebrew scripture that predates the bible and tells us that God created both man and woman equal in his own image. Is this an attempt to give men dominion over woman?
Some Christians might tell you, “Actually, Jesus is the Word of God.”
Different Christians regard the Bible in different ways, but only a small minority believe the Bible to be a word-for-word revelation directly from God, in the way Muslims believe the Quran to be.
A larger subset, though still far from all Christians, hold to Biblical inerrancy. To them, any apparent contradictions in Scripture are the result of misinterpreting or misapplying the problematic passages. They’re just not “allowed” to say, “The Bible’s wrong about that” or “That’s a mistake” or “That particular part of the Bible doesn’t count.” They’re okay with more than one Creation story, or more than one gospel account, as long as they can explain away any apparent direct contradictions between them. As for how they do that in particular cases, you should be able to find examples online if you look in the right places, though I don’t know offhand of any particularly good sources to recommend.
Genesis does indeed contain two entirely different creation stories, from two different sources (called the J and the P document, respectively), and there are other source documents that were later combined at some point a long long time ago to become the torah.
My pastor baptized a sweet little baby girl “Lilith,” thereby dooming her to only date demons. The parents must’ve liked the name of that “pretty lady on Cheers” without researching why the name was intended to be funny. :smack:
Thank you.
This is very helpful. I guess I’m interested in how Biblical literalists would explain away the contradictions, and how much of that population are literalists. What is the most popular belief: that animals were created first or man created first? And what implications does this have for the respect for the animal kingdom on Christians? I could see an argument that, if animals were created first, they should be respected, not dominated; I can also see the argument that, if man was created first, man is at the top of the hierarchy.
So which of the stories is held to be true for most Christians? There are important implications in each different story, and I’m trying to get at the root of some issues regarding male domination and regarding domination of the earth.
Again, this (and the original post quoted in your reply about chromosomes) brings me to the issue of fundamentalist Christianity. Do many Christians take the account literally, or do most Christians take it symbolically? I suppose there are issues with both, as symbolically if woman was created from man there are implications that she is to submit to man.
This is fascinating. Can you direct me to a source that explains how the rib is a euphemism for the baculum? I am very interested in this. Also, would this mean that this theory comes from those who take the Bible literally or symbolically? Is this intended as an actual account of how man lacks a baculum, or a symbolic account?
I’m having a little trouble buying this one, myself. It just sounds to me that on the “Plausible Theory<—>Pulled It Out Of My Ass” scale, it leans slightly to the right.
I found this article to explain the origins of this theory. Still not sure how prevalent it is, though. It would be interesting to find out.
Also, this quick little blurb explains a counter to the theory as well. I would be interested in input regarding this.
Not really so weird. If you look at a modern legal textbook, you will find many stories of what the law used to be, a description of the legal case or enacted law that changed it, and then a statement of what the law is now. The history helps understand the context and reason for the current rule.
So I’m wondering how much of the Old Testament Christians (or modern Christians, maybe?) take as holy. If Jesus said to abandon the Old Testament laws (did he say this?), then do Christians only hold the New Testament to be law?
Also, how do you explain Christians believing in the Old Testament Genesis account of creation if Jesus said to abandon the Old Testament? This, of course, is assuming the person was right that Jesus said to abandon the OT laws, which I am unsure of.
I think there is a difference between abandoning OT Law and the OT itself.
Well, just off the top of my head, he may have meant to change the OT laws without abandoning the OT history.
Oh, ok. This makes more sense. So that’s also why Christians don’t follow the myriad of commandments from the OT? The history is God’s word, but Jesus made following all those commandments obsolete?
No, you need to learn to read those word-things. The list enumerates 7 sons, 27 grandsons and a daughter, for a total of 35; but 2 of the grandsons buy the farm in Canaan (one is Onan, who may or may not be the dude that jehovallah smote for not spooging inside his wife). So a careful reading works out if one assumes they were all in the kitchen with Dinah.
The the first line of the second thing there excludes the wives of the sons, then adds them in in the second line.
I guess the goal of writing this way is to force the reader to pay attention to the text. By making the text obfuscatory, the users of it are given wiggle-room to declare what it actually means. Given that it was written in an era where some smaller towns did not even have a whole complete copy on hand to work from.
From what I can remember, they kind of meld the two stories and use the parts they need. The first chapter has the part about “fill the earth and subdue it”, so that is handy. And the nameless humans are created side-by-side, like all the beasts, so that takes care of the snares of biology that the second chapter gets caught up in. But the bit about Eve and the snake is very useful for keeping those nasty women under the patriarchy and for laying out that original sin guilt trip. Most Chrislims never actually read the words so carefully that they even see two different stories there, they just assume that it makes sense. That is what I remember. Do not question the holy scripture.