Ah, but my question is not “which version of Genesis has more internal consistency?”, but “which version, if either, can be (even hypothetically) independently verified?” If I was interested in accuracy, simple internal consistency wouldn’t be the best indicator. And if eight-day creation being inconsistent with other parts of the bible is a valid argument, I don’t see why the existing inconsistencies in the seven-day version are not.
In the earlier example of a hypothetical Henry IX establishing the Church of England, we at least have some corroborating evidence in the form of documents that were written at the time but not in England. I’m not aware of comparable outside corroboration of Genesis, so calling it a “history” book strikes me a bit presumptuous.
I didn’t call it a history book. I used history books as an example in illustrating detection of accuracy.
The whole proposition I was interested in debating was a comparison between the two documents, contesting the two against one another. I suppose I didn’t catch it in your O.P.
If we can modify the thread to a comparison between the two, I’d be interested
in continuing. If not, I guess I’m not too interested in the same old same old prove the bible is true arguments or the inconsistencies of the bible. It boils down to just an argument over things that aren’t necessarily possible to prove.
But I’ll continue if we do make it 7 v. 8 documents alone.
Okay, but I’m not sure what the foray into numerology is supposed to prove. Does it matter if “seven days” occurs more often than “eight days” in the rest of the text?
Besides, conformity with the original Hebrew is irrelevant. The hypothetical publisher in the OP prints an alternate bible in modern language. You could prove the NIV matches the Hebrew more closely, but how that lends support to a seven-day hypothesis is unclear to me.
Well, the frequency of the appearances in and of itself proves little, but its a bit of laying the groundwork. It does however slightly support an argument for a biblical preference for 7 over 8, however. But I’m not asking anyone to make any conclusions on that alone.
I thought we had modified the parameters of the discussion to an archeologist who finds two identical manuscripts, each equally appearing authentic on its face, except for the content difference of the 7 or 8 day creation accounts. As has been demonstrated, the argument for the modern day substitution by a printer has been brought to its logical conclusion.
I am tired tonight but will begin the real meat of my argument tomorrow.
“Biblica incorporated may (and probably would) object as they are the copyright holders on the NIV, but beyond that what argument could anyone make that the seventh-day version is better than the eighth-day version? What evidence can they bring to bear, even hypothetically, that supports such a claim? And suppose a child in Peru or Gambia of Tasmania gets one of the new bibles as their first bible and accepts the eighth-day creation. What arguments can use to convince them they are wrong, assuming they are wrong?”
There is nothing here to limit us to external evidence only, anyway.
I don’t get why an old version of an 8-day Genesis has more authority than a new version (nor why either should have less authority than an old 7-day version). Establishing this authority, or even a hypothetical approach one might take to do so, is what I had in mind, but no matter.
The OP appears to be arguing from a position known generally as “verificationism”. Here any statement, in order to have meaning, ,ust be able to be empirically verified. Thus scientific statements, such as “gold is the 79th element” are meaningful, where as statements like “God created the world in 7 days”, and theology in general are not meaningful because they cannot be verified.
This epistemology is widely rejected by philophers of all kinds, simply because it is too restrictive. As has been alluded to, history fails the verification test. What experiment would one do to determine that William of Normandy conquored England in 1066 as opposed to 1067? What if all of the ancient manuscripts were destroyed and history books were printed up that said 1067. How would you know which is right. The same can be said for moral judgements, and also aesthetic judgements. Neither of these can be verified either and so become meaningless.
Worse still, you can easily turn it back onto itself and ask is the verification principle itself verifiable. The answer unfortunately is no, which makes the whole position incoherent. So we could ask what would happen if all science text books were lost and the scientific method itself was lost. What experiment would someone do to demonstrate that the scientific method necessarility reveals truth? There is no experiment that anyone has thought of to verify the scientific method. The whole OP really is a case of special pleading in the sense that it asks for verification of divine revelation, yet does not ask for similar verification of the scientific method. If that was considered then it would be seen that scientific statements are at heart as unverifiable as religious statements in this sense. So there is no reason to consider that science is any more objectivly true then divine revelation.
There are eleventy bazillion people around the world who have memorized the entire Torah (and Talmud and Mishnah) and/or one of the many different permutations of the Christian Bible. If all printed copies of these works were lost, these folks would be more than happy to recite them to transcribers. Regards,
Having an archeologist discover identical copies eliminates old/new proofs. Now both claim oldness and now both apparently have proof they are old.
Because the 7 day version has claims that it was written in ancient times, and has ancient copies to back up the claim, and the 8 day version makes the same claim that it is ancient but has no evidence to back up the claim if a modern printer makes the 8 day version.
7 day claim is like a Doper with a cite
8 day claim is like a Doper who can’t cite his claim
Fair enough, though I guess what you’d get would be the best consensus of what they remember the bible said.
Okay, though the importance of this escapes me. Ancient texts have been found that are nearly identical, one claiming seven-day creation, the other claiming eight-day creation. Now what?
I think you are missing the point. The question is given two religious manuscripts, each from about the same time, how would we decide which one to believe?
Belief in the Bible is a tautology: what is in the Bible is true because it is in the Bible and the Bible is true. But given two texts, one saying A and the other saying not A, how would we know which one is correct?
It’s similar to the thought exercise that resulted in me no longer believing in God. There are multiple versions of religion, many of them very different from each other, and people who follow those religions are just as convinced they are right as I was in my Christian beliefs. If I had been born in a different country to a different family then I would have a completely different set of beliefs, so what is it that made my belief correct and those incorrect?
Lets make the OP a little different: there are two tribes with religious beliefs that are similar but differ in one significant aspect. If Tribe A dies out and Tribe B survives then our entire religious history goes one way, and if Tribe A survives instead, our set of beliefs goes in another direction. In both cases people could later point to the religious traditions of those before them to justify their beliefs. How could an observer back in time have decided which of those tribe’s beliefs were correct?
To me it is a little like evolution. A horse was not destined to have evolved. A small change in the environment a million years ago could have produced different results. Are our religious beliefs also a product of chance?
Sure, I guess. Though as far as I can tell, MEBuckner’s point is that the eight-day bible is demonstrably different than the seven-day bible, which I thought was obvious enough. My question has always been how could one test which version is more accurate, not which version was older.
Of course, my overarching point (because there’s no real need to be coy or disingenuous about it) is asking just how much of a religion’s core mystical beliefs are arbitrary in nature, such that one could make tweaks and rewrites starting with trivial details like how long it took to create the universe and later on to changing the names and even numbers of deities.
I would take issue for the absolutist nature of your statement. I could agree that believing in some parts of the bible could be tautological. Perhaps the portions regarding the supernatural could be such. However, as the bible has served as an invaluable reference historically, and archeologists have relied upon it to make discoveries of cities otherwise unknown except in the bible. This is external evidence and believing generally that the historical parts of the bible have a good degree of accuracy is not tautological.
It’s interesting enough but I’d suggest another thread, perhaps?
Parts of the Bible match history and some parts don’t, but there certainly are large numbers of people who take all of it literally. How would literalists determine which of two ancient texts to take as gospel? Right now they start with the assumption that one particular book and its associated beliefs are true and work from there. How could one choose one over the other if all the historical parts were the same?
It’s fine with me if that’s what you want the thread to turn into. Its your thread. But shutting down my arguments by changing the O.P. doesn;t give me the chance to debate it that I wanted.
or the thread could contain both but I think that likely to be confusing.
I am currently working on that argument in the terms of the proposed O.P. of how to tell the difference, in a word document. It is slow going, but I promise the answer tonight or tomorrow maybe.