Dnebb
You are the one willfully misreading it…
LOL :smack: Where is this contradiction… God planted a garden eastward…LOL
Day three. No animals and no mankind.
Here we are on the fifth day, God has created the animals and looked upon it and seen that his creation was good–and still no humans.
Then:
So after the animals have been created on the sixth day, then God creates male and female humans.
In contrast:
There is no life on the earth, not even plants. Then God raises a mist and waters the earth (no mention of plants growing, yet), then God creates a man before any other living thing.
Next,
So after God has created a man, he then plants a garden (still no animals the way it was described in Gn 1:25, so the order continues out of sequence). After which,
God finally makes the animals and then a woman, contradicting the story in Genesis 1 in which the man and woman are both created after the animals.
This is not an overview followed by detail. These are two separate stories with a common message (the authorship of God) that contradict each other on the minor details that are not relevant because they are not intended as a scientific treatise.
And you are, indeed, willfully misreading the actual accounts in the bible.
Also, Nolies, if you start calling Biblical contradictions figurative, then much of Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, and Kings becomes figurative (which obviously the redactors did not consider figurative). The early years of David’s life become “figurative” etc. And… drumroll… the crucifixion and resurrection become figurative, as the gospels do not agree. John even has Jesus crucified on a different day from the synoptic accounts.
Given our post-Einstein understanding of time as relative (its relation to space and motion), I don’t see how God (who doesn’t dwell at a particular point in physical space) could be otherwise than outside time.
(This is tangent #… what? 8? 9?)
Nolies, you’re losing track of your own agenda. :rolleyes:
Hellooo??
YOU’RE the one who is in here arguing for a literal interpretation of the Bible. And now, suddenly, some parts of the Bible are…figures of speech?
Uh huh. :rolleyes:
Please be so kind to elucidate for me (since I have already done it extensively for you) how you decide which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally, and which parts are to be taken as figures of speech or allegory.
You know what? I don’t think you really know WHAT you believe–I think you’re just in here parroting a Fundamentalist party line on Creation and Inerrancy, but beyond that, and a generalized cynical belief in a little-g god who isn’t really very powerful, I don’t think you know what you believe. Or why you believe it.
One of the first verses that was pointed out to me as “very very important” by my grandma was 1 Peter 3:15:
We’re told–commanded–to always be ready to explain what we believe, and why we believe it.
Well, yes, I make the assumption that Time, as the fourth dimension, was something that had to be created along with the other three dimensions. When the Universe came into being, whether it was via God or a non-denominational Big Bang, it brought along with it the concepts of Time and Space. Before there was Existence, there would have been no Time or Space, because Time and Space are a part of existence.
…instead of answering Sample’s question about how you decide which parts are literal and which parts are figures of speech, you refer us to someone else and tell us, “Go read his book”? I see.
And actually, I perceive that you yourself have not read Bullinger, nor are you familiar with the contents of his book. The phrase “figures of speech” in this context does not mean “allegory”. The phrase “figures of speech” is used here, as it was in 1898, when he wrote the book, to mean “rhetorical and oratorical devices”, not “things that are not literally true”. It means ways of talking, of speechifying, to make your speech more interesting. People in the 19th century were very big on orations and formal speech-making, so I can see why Bullinger would spend a considerable amount of time listing all the oratorical devices that crop up in the Bible.
Thus, your referring us to “read Bullinger on figures of speech in the Bible” I take to mean that you have not read his book, and that you are not familiar with what he’s saying: all you know is that there’s this book with the title “Figures of Speech in the Bible”, and you think that it must be dealing with allegories and metaphors in the Bible.
Well, it’s not.
A sampling of Bullinger dealing with Genesis 1 and 2 shows that he is indeed talking about rhetorical devices, not “metaphors and allegories”.
If you’re going to cite people, you ought to make sure they bolster your position before you quote them.
Talk about “denying the obvious”: there were other people living in Egypt besides Egyptians and Israelites. Obviously the Egyptians bought some starter cattle from their neighbors and started over.
Also, there was a plague of boils in the intervening time period between the cattle plague and the plague of hail, and the Bible doesn’t say how much time elapsed between plagues. And since the gestation period of cattle is nine months, and since heifers can breed at 14 months old, it’s perfectly possible that several years passed between the cattle plague, the intervening plague of boils, and the plague of hail–plenty of time for the Egyptians to rebuild their herds.
Poop.
Linkie for above Bullinger material.
Seems clear to me. All the cattle died EXCEPT the Isrealites. Verse 19 is telling the Isrealites to gather their cattle so it will not die. Or what DDG said.
Once again I have to question this interpretation of the word “Before.” As in Genesis 2, Where (I’m paraphrasing) “God brought the animals before Adam.” One meaning of before is “prior to”, but another is “in front of.” If I command you to stand before me, I’m telling you to stand in front of me, not to stand up prior to when I stand up. In this way, Jesus was slain in front of the whole world, very very publicly. Not in a place that didn’t exist yet. Makes much more sense to me that way.
This is why I previously asked if someone had a different version (such as KJV) of these verses to compare and contrast.
Screw it, I’ll do it myself.
“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (KJV)
I have no idea what the hell that means, but to me the word “from” does not mean “prior to.” Best I can come up with is that it’s a pretty way of saying He was removed from the material world. There is no way I can twist it to mean that God has His thumb on the fast forward and rewind buttons of the universe.
My translation (American Standard) has it this way:
“And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, every one whose name hath not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain.”
It’s really awkwardly worded, but this translation makes the meaning clearer.
Very awkwardly! But from that it looks like “foundation of the world” refers to everyone who has ever lived, and not about when the crucifixion occured. Looks like the NIV has dangled a participle.
The 11th Commandment should read: Thou shalt not dangle words in the Good Book, which are participles.
Similarly, in Genesis when it is said that God created Adam, then created animals and brought them to Adam to have them named, every version I seen could reasonably be interpreted thus:
Step 1: God creates Adam.
Step 2: God brings forth the animals, which God created. Back in step 0. Did I mention step 0? No? Anyway, these created animals were, in step 2, brought before* Adam. So there.
Yes, I can see how in the NIV (and KJV) there is a contradiction, but one must bring a fairly anal interpretation to the reading. It’s a point of contention that I’d hesitate to bring to a debate.
*In front of, not prior to, althought not necessarily not prior to, neither.
TDN, you need a bookmark for the Bible Gateway. Nineteen translations, no waiting. 
Helpful footnotes, one-click “show this to me in another translation” updates. Foreign language versions, too, for the next time you need to look something up in the Korean Bible…
It could, but it didn’t.
Look again:
It does not say simply that God went out and gathered the animals and brought them around for naming. It expressly says that the man was alone and out of the ground God formed the beasts to alleviate that condition.
The authors of Genesis did mention step 0; it was back in Genesis 1: 24 - 25 where God created the animals first, and even took the time to see that it was good, prior to moving on to create humans.
Now, if one is desperate enough to need all of scripture to be in perfect harmony, one might talk oneself into believing that the author just muddled the chronology, but when reading the text, the two chapters are in contradiction.
…so there.
Fine, fine. Have it your way.
Instead, I’ll just poke a little fun at Adam.
“Um… Owl. Snail. Worm. Archaeopterix. Drosophila melanogaster. Uh… Cat. Gila monster. snicker Dodo bird. Spotted leopard. Serpent. Ravenous angry horrible… eh, let’s just call it a bunny.”
“Um, God? How much longer do I have to do this? Really? Oh, OK. Ant. Wild boar. Dromodary. Wallabee. sigh Germs. Bat. Sheep.”
“Mmmm, sheep…”
“Adam!” boomed the Lord. “Leave that ‘sheep’ alone! And give me one of your ribs! Now, young man!”
hehe… I have always wondered how that went.
In telling a story a true story, it is often that one tells things out of order. You could give a history of the US then go and talk about Jefferson as prez and after that talk about Washington. But in context of the first the reader knows, unless he is trying to be dumb the context of the next references. Read just about any book and you will get this it is a common literary style…
Well, no, it’s not a literary style, it’s a literary technique. Regardless, that’s not what’s happening here. What we’re talking about is a book that says on one page that Washington was president before Jefferson, and on another page that Jefferson was president before Washington. That’s not just moving back and forward in time within the narrative, that’s a blatant contradiction.
What you say is true. But you don’t explicitly make Jefferson president before Washington if you’re doing that.
Read what Tom~ explained to you. Then take a look at your own Bible and see what terms are used for the Divinity in those chapters: Lord, LORD in caps., or God. You’ll find that the first story uses “God,” translating elohim. the plural noun meaning the one true God of Israel, and the second story “the LORD God,” translating God’s title and the Divine Name YHWH. You’ll note that the first story has a transcendent God overlooking all of Creation, while the second story has an immanent God who gets down into the dirt, literally, and creates Adam from it, and breathes life into him. You’ll note that the first story is repetitive, patterned, in how it tells of Creation; the second, in very much “storyteller mode” and focusing on mankind.
You seem to be taking the attitude that unless it’s taken as historical exposition similar to an account of who was elected president when, it’s somehow less than true. But things like the 23rd Psalm and Jesus’s parables, to say nothing of stories like “Footsteps,” are not “less than true” for being other genres of writing than historical exposition. If anything, they pack more truth into a smaller space by being written as they are.
While we’re off in hijack-land, may I ask your opinion of the Book of Job – what the author was doing, why it’s written as it is, and so on?