As I said, that kind of argument (or sometimes war) has been going on since Martin Luther. You will never completely settle a contested point of Scriptural interpretation to anyone’s satisfaction but your own.
But the text of Genesis 2 flatly states that the first man was made when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up. While Genesis 1 flatly states that plants were created on the 3rd day, man was created on the 6th day. So according to Genesis 1, when man was created there were plants of the field and herbs of the field.
And why does this matter? It doesn’t matter! These are two different accounts of the creation of the earth and of man, they don’t have to match exactly because they aren’t inerrant words dictated by YHWH, but rather the writings of two differnt people perhaps hundreds of years apart, whose exact relationship with the divine is not clear.
The only problem is if we assume that both stories should taken as inerrant science text rather than conflicting attempts by human beings to describe the divine. Of course they conflict, and it doesn’t matter, because it simply doesn’t matter whether man was created first or plants were created first, the point of the story is that God created man and plants. The only possible way it might make a smidgeon of difference is that one account might lead one to believe that man was created in such a way as to exist in an already created world, the other that the world was created in such a way as to provide a home for man. Pretty nitpicking theological difference.
But the two accounts are flatly contradictory…if we assume the stories only have value if they are the literal 100% inerrant truth.
No, it really isn’t. It is actually provable impossible for any Roman census to have taken place in Judea before 6 CE, regardless of who the governor was (and while Herod was king, it wasn’t Quirinius). here is an analysis by historian, Richard Carrier which demonstrates systematically and wiith cites why every attempt at harmonization fails on its face. The fact that Luke is in clear contradiction to Matthew is not really disputed by scholars because objective scholarship does not require the accounts to be reconciled and the only reason even to attempt it is to salvage an a priori religious belief in the inerrancy of scripture.
It seems like you define “Scholar”= “as someone who agrees with me”. :dubious:
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A scholar is someone who follows a specific methodological approach to discovering information and reaching conclusions. Your guy, Marchant (who appears to be an accounting teacher at an unaccredited Bible college with no actual credentials except a Divinity degree from something called “Biblical Theological seminary” (a web search reveals what appears to be another unnaccredited diploma mill), is starting from a postion that the Bible cannot be in error (already an unscholarly position) and then basically talks out of his ass for several paragraphs in which he offers no real evidence for his conclusion but only tries to obfuscate the matter with groundless speculation and irrelevant appeals to what he thinks were “similar” Roman practices at the time (esentially, he thinks if the Romans did something similar somewhere else, then they must have done it in Judea. The problem with that is that his examples aren’t really similar). As I said before, he isn’t practicing scholarship, he practicing apologetics.
I assure you, it’s absolutely airtight and I welcome any attempt to prove otherwise. What you’ve done is akin to trying to prove that evolution isn’t scientifically accepted as fact by linking to creationist websites.
Respectfully, DrDeth, sometimes you have a point about me being too categorical or overconfident in my claims but this is not one of those times. Read the Carrier piece.
The imaginary prior governorship for Quirinius is the most common solution (which is not only absurd on its face but also moot before 6 CE).
The frontal assaults on Josephus are even more ridiculous as Josephus’ dates are amply backed by other corroborative evidence (his chronology is well supported by coins, for instance).
The estimable Duck Duck Goose, longstanding member here (whom I haven’t seen recently), drew a distinction once. According to her, the first people to buy into Fundamentalism, back when the movement started, considered the Scriptures inerrant as regards doctrinal matters. Only later was the idea expanded to what we typically think of as Fundamentalist doctrine, that there are no errors whatsoever in the Bible, that every statement in it, every allusion to some king or animal, must therefore be true.
If I’m understanding sfworker accurately, he’s alive to the nuance that there is a lot of the Bible that is not factual reportage: that a line about hills dancing in a Psalm, for example, is a poetic metaphor, or that the Book of Job may be a fictional dialogue exploring God’s wisdom and mystery on the story of Job; that phrases like “the four corners of the world” are tropes and that “God mooning Moses” in Exodus 33-34 is actually symbolic.
I’d be curious as to sfworker’s reaction to these comments.
[QUOTE=sfworker]
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sfworker, would you mind not quoting in that format? It is very very difficult to read, and, I should think, needlessly difficult to code. Why not just use quotation marks or, if you must, the regular quote tags?
I’m hackling all over the place.
And that’s the reason I posted the maligned statement:
“Scripture is just as difficult to disprove as it is to prove.”
You’re in the same groove with oh-so many Christians, throwing logic, context and common sense right out the window. I’m constantly hearing complaints that Christian’s are myopic and illogical, but it seems to be more a human trait than exclusively applicable to Christians (and Muslim extremists).
It doesn’t matter what you actually believe - as long as there’s a viable alternative to your argument (and it is) - the door is open. You can’t prove anymore than I can. Your rebuttal is simply your opinion.
The difference between you and I is that I’m able to allow for your opinion. I can’t say you’re wrong because I can’t prove it, where you easily dismiss my example. Think about it.
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
Sorry about that, it wasn’t intentional. I have to quit posting from work. I’m not much of a multi-tasker.
I agree 100%. I suspect that’s intentional, but that’s just me. Actually if you could prove some things one way or another, those things wouldn’t be quite as interesting. It would be like debating which brand of dish soap worked better.
YES!!! Thankyouthankyouthankyou… 
I don’t know why I didn’t think to put it that way, but you hit the nail!!!
Then you are going to have to actually say something instead of dodging around hiding from the discussion and changing the meaning of what you have posted. In a thread that is nerarly 150 posts long, you have only addressed one of the specific errors noted in Scripture–the contradiction between Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 and Genesis 2:4 - 25–and you got that wrong (although you used a common re-interpretation). As has been pointed out, Gn 1:11 - 13 places the creation of plants on the third day while the creation of humanity occurs in Gn 1:26 - 27 on the sixth day. Gn 2:5 - 6 has man being created when no plant had risen from the ground. You can wriggle around any explanation you wish, but you cannot change the fact that Scripture says plants came before man and then man came before plants…
However, I am less concerened with your theology than with the general progress of this thread. I stand by my assessment that you and your other opponents cannot find a middle ground on which to even disagree because you are approaching the subject from perspectives that are wholly dissimilar.
Technically anything is possible, but logically not everything is probable.
Technically God could play Forward for the Rockets, but it isn’t logical that He does. I can’t prove that God doesn’t play Forward (He could be at Center) so I have to allow for a technical alternative unless or until I can prove it wrong.
Logically, if God exists and His Word was inspired by Him, it would be perfect and flawless because God is perfect and flawless.
If He doesn’t exist, I should be doing something more worthwhile. Because I believe He does exist I think I am.
I can’t prove the Bible is His inspired Word, but I can prove what the documents we have access to, actually say. I can also present a logical explanation for some of the more complex or less obvious passages - it doesn’t mean I’m right - only that there’s a logical alternative to “The Bible is not God’s inspired Word because of a particular passage that isn’t easily contemplated”.
The Bible is more profound than anything I’ve come across and I have the sense that it’s depth is more than I can imagine, so I’m hesitant to accept it simply as a book recorded by mere humanoids.
I’ll say it again - It’s as difficult to disprove as it is to prove.
Thinking we (humans) “get it (as in anything)” is presumptuous. Age has a way of teaching you that one of the greatest truths is that we think a whole lot more of our own abilities than reality suggests.
Let me guess…you’re a control freak?
You completely disregard most of what I said, which either means you’re arrogant or you only scan.
Genesis 2 has ONE reference to a day and suggests no order to what follows. If you don’t read with a modicum of logic, well, you’re going to respond with the regurgitation above.
“approaching the subject from perspectives that are wholly dissimilar”
de·bate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-bt)
v. de·bat·ed, de·bat·ing, de·bates
v. intr.
To consider something; deliberate.
To engage in argument by discussing opposing points.
To engage in a formal discussion or argument. See Synonyms at discuss.
Obsolete. To fight or quarrel.
It’s just not worth it, but thanks for the hackle…
Untrue. Tons of things are not possible. For instance, the existence of an invisible pink unicorn (or invisible pink anything (or invisible colored anything)).
You’re assuming facts not in evidence. What proof have you that the Creator of the universe is has any of the qualities you ascribe to him – i.e., masculinity, perfection, or flawlessness? For that matter, what do “perfect” & “flawless” mean in this context?
For example, I could define “perfection” as to include the quality of having a material form lacking any weakness or bilateral asymmetry. In that sense, the common concept of Apollo is perfect, while YWVH is not, as YWVH has no body, as I gather your belief to be. You’d surely disagree, but until you define the abstract terms you throw about all Anselm-like, you’ll have a hard time making your case.
Also you haven’t defined “inspired.” Does it mean “dictated by”–that is, were the prophets & apostles no more than stenographers? Or does “inspired” mean they were moved to write it by their experiences of the divine, with the words & imagery stemming from their own life experiences? Or does it mean something else again.
(Here’s an example. In a sense, the novel I’ve been working on is inspired by Stephen Sondheim musical–in the sense that I never heard the word “manticore” before Bernadette Peters sang it. But that doesn’t mean my story reflects anything about “Into the Woods,” or that Sondheim or Peters would say my story reflects their view of the word.
When come back, bring definitions as well as pie.
What else have you come across? My father once told me that the King James Version was the best translation of the Bible he’d ever read, and surely its compostion was directly led by God; he added, upon questioning, that he’d never read any other translations.
So have you read the Koran? The Upanishads? The epic of Gilgamesh? The Eddas? What?
That’s exactly the kind of snarky comment I usually make in GD threads. But I admit to being an ass.
Sorry for the above snarky remark. It’s closer to a personal attack than I care to make; I let my impulses rule me for a second.
Might I suggest you enlarge your reading list?
Alternatively, you are a person who likes to post stuff without thinking, then backpedal all over the countryside until you find an escape. You appear to have finally decided your real position in post #151 and only after Polycarp laid it out for you. (Amusingly, this is exactly the position of the Catholic Church that you were at pains to ridicule, earlier.)
You will note that I requested at the very beginning of this thread that you explain your actual discussion point. Instead, you have wandered around avoiding answers and making (largely erroneous) claims about what other people believe. It is not so much that I am a control freak as that I am compelled to read these threads and I prefer to see them carried out with some semblance of communication among the participants.
As to your distortion of Genesis, Genesis 2:4 ff describes specific events in a particular order. The fact that it does not name or number days is irrelevant to the point. It first says that no plants were growing on the Earth, then says that waters came up to water the Earth, then that God formed Adam from dust, and finally says that God planted a garden. That is simply a contradiction of the order of Genesis 1. Since it is presented as a narrative, there is no reason to believe that the order of events is different than the order of description. It does not provide a catalog of “things that happened” in no particular order, otherwise we might find Adam naming beasts prior to his being crearted or the naming of beasts being mentioned as an additional story point after the creation of Eve.
I will also note that you seem to have based your argument on the notion that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are separate chapters in the original. However, the break between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 was not created until the 13th century when Stephen Langton organized the bible chapters, breaking the Torah/Pentateuch into approximately equal length segments as found in the Latin Vulgate without actual regard to the text in Hebrew.
In other words, after making a big deal about the later translations corrupting our understanding of God’s Word, you based your own exigesis on the error of bookbinding that separated the first three verses of Genesis 2 from their coherent inclusion in the story in Genesis 1. The story that begins in Gn 1:1 ends end Gn 2:3 and the next story begins in Gn 2:4. That second story tells, in narrative fashion, events in a sequence according to the narration. Using a flawed thirteenth century chapter division, imposed on a translation, to determine the meaning of a text dating at least 1800 years earlier is hardly the way to discern God’s Word from the “original.”