# Have we been getting the creation wrong all this time ?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [October 23, 2015, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527 "2015-10-23T12:38:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/1 "2015-10-23T12:38:09Z")
New International version.
> [@](#):
>
> 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Now take note: earth, not Earth.
This is not a story of planetary creation, this is a story of soil creation.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/2 "2015-10-23T12:45:48Z")
Assuming you’re serious (which I have trouble believing): You do realize, don’t you, that that’s just a translation of something that was originally written in Hebrew? If you’re going to base a theological argument on word choice, you have to consider the original language.
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/3 "2015-10-23T12:48:20Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> Assuming you’re serious (which I have trouble believing): You do realize, don’t you, that that’s just a translation of something that was originally written in Hebrew? If you’re going to base a theological argument on word choice, you have to consider the original language.
It’s the word of God, and therefore infallible.:mad:
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/4 "2015-10-23T12:53:09Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> It’s the word of God, and therefore infallible.:mad:
The whole Bible is stuffed full of contradictions. Explain.
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/5 "2015-10-23T12:57:08Z")
> [@running\_coach](#):
>
> The whole Bible is stuffed full of contradictions. Explain.
It may have _previously_ seen to be full of contradictions, but then the very first sentence has been misread for 2,000 years. Those contradictions should be reassessed in the light of a correct \*\*soilist \*\*reading. I think you’ll find it should all slot together after that false predicate is corrected, because the bible is the word of God.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/6 "2015-10-23T12:57:26Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> It’s the word of God, and therefore infallible.:mad:
I smell a straw man. Even strict Biblical inerrantists don’t claim that all translations of the Bible are infallible.
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/7 "2015-10-23T13:00:48Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> I smell a straw man. Even strict Biblical inerrantists don’t claim that all translations of the Bible are infallible.
They are weak in faith, and they haven’t spotted the essential error.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/8 "2015-10-23T13:17:18Z")
Even if you believe that the Bible is the word of God, you have to believe (unless you want to believe in obvious contradictions) that it’s the original text of the Bible (which for the Old Testament means that it’s in Hebrew) which is the word of God. Otherwise you would have to believe that all editions are the word of God. This would mean, for instance, that the Wicked Bible was the word of God. The Wicked Bible was a printing of the King James Bible where there was a misprint in the Ten Commandments which changed the commandment to “Thou shall commit adultery.” Are you going to claim that that is also the word of God?:
> **[Wicked Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible)**
>
> The Wicked Bible, sometimes called the Adulterous Bible or the Sinners' Bible, is an edition of the Bible published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, meant to be a reprint of the King James Bible. The name is derived from a mistake made by the compositors: in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:14, the word "not" was omitted from the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery," causing the verse to instead read "Thou shalt commit adultery."
> The Wicked Bible is ...
There are many places in the vast number of Bible translations available in a vast number of languages where it’s clear to experts in ancient Hebrew (or ancient Greek for the New Testament) that there is an error in translation. If you’re going to assert that the Bible is the word of God, you can do one of three things: First, you can claim that all of them are the word of God, and therefore all of the contradictory translations are the word of God. Second, you can claim that you and you alone are able to say that a particular translation is the word of God, because you and you alone are the sole person on Earth who has that ability to pick out the correct translation. (And perhaps you’ve noticed that nobody other than you on the SDMB believes that.) Third, you can claim that the original version is the word of God, in which case you have no access to it because you don’t know Hebrew (or Greek).
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/9 "2015-10-23T13:47:50Z")
Unless it correctly places soil as fundamental to Genesis then I’ll have no truck with your wicked bible heresies.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/10 "2015-10-23T14:16:43Z")
So, as I expected, either you want to claim that you and you alone are qualified to say what the meaning of every phrase in the Bible is or else you don’t actually want to ask us a question at all, since this is all just a big joke for you.
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/11 "2015-10-23T14:26:23Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> Unless it correctly places soil as fundamental to Genesis then I’ll have no truck with your wicked bible heresies.
GD isn’t the place for parody.
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### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/12 "2015-10-23T14:27:19Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> I smell a straw man. Even strict Biblical inerrantists don’t claim that all translations of the Bible are infallible.
And I feel a huge rush of wind coming from somewhere…
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/13 "2015-10-23T14:29:15Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> It’s the word of God, and therefore infallible.:mad:
Which did God create first: animals or human beings?
The first chapter of Genesis says God created the animals first and then created people. The second chapter of Genesis says God created people first and then created the animals.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/14 "2015-10-23T14:32:53Z")
It’s a pretty simple story. First there was just sea, and then God created land and sky. It’s a creation myth, not rocket science.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/15 "2015-10-23T14:53:01Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> Assuming you’re serious (which I have trouble believing): You do realize, don’t you, that that’s just a translation of something that was originally written in Hebrew? If you’re going to base a theological argument on word choice, you have to consider the original language.
I went ahead and looked up the word here. This is [Strong’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong's_Concordance) number H776. Here is the definition as provide by e-Sword:
H776
אֶרֶץ
‘erets
eh’-rets
From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land): - X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world.
Total KJV occurrences: 2505
This is only the beginning of a word study.
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/16 "2015-10-23T14:54:29Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> I went ahead and looked up the word here. This is [Strong’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong's_Concordance) number H776. Here is the definition as provide by e-Sword:
>
> H776
>
> אֶרֶץ
> ‘erets
> eh’-rets
> From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land): - X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world.
> Total KJV occurrences: 2505
>
> This is only the beginning of a word study.
Do they have capital letters for proper nouns ? Not that it matters because this is God’s natural language is English.
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### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/17 "2015-10-23T14:59:42Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> It’s the word of God, and therefore infallible.
Sure, it is the word of God; but the spelling and punctuation belong to man.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/18 "2015-10-23T15:11:58Z")
> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> Sure, it is the word of God; but the spelling and punctuation belong to man.
No; speling and puncuration belongs two Saten
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/19 "2015-10-23T16:34:55Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> I smell a straw man. Even strict Biblical inerrantists don’t claim that all translations of the Bible are infallible.
You mean that it is not true that I **should** commit adultery? ☹
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2015, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-been-getting-the-creation-wrong-all-this-time/735527/20 "2015-10-23T16:36:42Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> Do they have capital letters for proper nouns ? Not that it matters because this is God’s natural language is English.
I have read it in Hebrew, in Hebrew School. Capital letters had not yet been invented. And if God’s natural language is English, he would have made it simpler.
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