Ivellious wrote:Thanks, RickD...It is important for people who claim they only hold a "literal" interpretation of the Bible to realize that it can only be "literal" in its original form, not the translated/edited versions we have in the western world today.
Ivellious,To claim a "literal" reading, one must take the context, as well. In the story of the tower of babel, in Genesis 11, the bible says: Genesis 11:1:1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
The word translated "earth", is the same word as in the flood story, "erets". Here, in Genesis 11:1, is another literal meaning of erets. In this case it means "people". Here, read it this way " Now the whole earth(people) used the same language and the same words."
Obviously it doesn't mean "entire planet". That would be silly. The earth, as a planet, doesn't speak using a language. This is another example of how if one sticks to a concrete, literal reading(in English), the text doesn't make sense. Many YECs want to claim we should read Genesis so concretely, that we miss the real context. It's still important to read in a literal context, but literal doesn't always mean to read scripture plainly, and concretely, like we read the newspaper.
John 5:24 24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
-Edward R Murrow
St. Richard the Sarcastic--The Patron Saint of Irony
It will give you an idea of what we're talking about here. Answers in Genesis is not the authority on God's creation. Many Christians believe in interpreting the bible literally, and disagree with AIG, and Young Earth Creationism(YEC).
YEC can also mean Young Earth Creationist, depending on the context.
John 5:24 24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
-Edward R Murrow
St. Richard the Sarcastic--The Patron Saint of Irony
"There is a theory that says each of God's days in Genesis were actually millions of years for us. Is this true? Maybe we need to ask what does the word "day" mean in Genesis?
The Hebrew word "yom" is translated as day in Genesis. Just as our word "day" can have different meanings based on its context, so can the word "yom". For example, in the Old Testament "yom" is translated to mean a 24 hour day 1109 times. It means a long, long period of time--such as an age--about nine times.
However, every time the word "yom" is used with the term evening or morning in the Bible, it means a regular 24 hour day.
Every time the word "yom" is used with a number, such as "40 yom" (40 days), it means a regular 24 hour day.
What we now see is that in Genesis chapter one God is going out of His way to emphasize that each day is a normal 24 hour day."
I posted that from missiontoamerica.org, it's also in another topic that im posting in.
Ivellious wrote:Read the article, but I'm not even kind of sold. It basically repeats the line, "The Bible is so vague at this point so you can just fill in 'God made it happen' everywhere there is a question."
Also, this presumes YEC, as I've been told before. It contradicts itself entirely by saying Noah didn't have to keep any water dwelling animals on the boat (because they could just live underwater), but at the same time the waters killed all the life under them...Even so, there is no logic in saying the fish could live there, because every type of water life needs specific nutrients, light levels, and salinity to survive. Those would be all kids of mixed up in the flood.
Also, I find it kind of funny that the article plays with the idea that they could have just brought 2 of each of a few kinds of "groups" of animals, which would then change into the diversity of life afterward...Of course, by that logic, in 4,000 years a handful of animals developed into tens of thousands of different species. Evolution much?
It also commits a few silly fallacies, like saying that the flood is the ultimate cause of all fossils and every natural feature of the Earth...I don't even know where to start with that.
I'll look a little more into this and come up with some information for you. Gotta go nerd on this one.
ivellious makes some good points here. Some of what he said plays into OEC, definitely a good thing to read up on the local flood theory if your interested in the topic,.
Let Scripture interpret Scripture. The Bible says in Genesis chapter seven verse nineteen and twenty "(19)And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. (20)The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits (26 feet) deep. What is not clear about that?
Har – It can mean mountain or hill. Even some Y.E. creationists believe that Gen. 7:19-20 is only referring to hills. They claim that mountains were formed towards the end of the Flood.
The main Hebrew word describing the extent of the flood is erets, but this word can mean a number of things. The context is the key to its meaning.
Planet – Gen. 1:1, 2
Continents – Gen. 1:10, 24
Region/country – Gen. 2:11, 12 and 13; 4:16
People – Gen. 11:1 (see 11:6 - What had the same language?)
It goes on to say that all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind.
ALL here means everything in the region (erets).
Why is the effect said to be limited to land creatures (Gen. 6:7, 17; 7:4, 21-23) if it was a global event? Surely the creatures in the sea would have died. But, a flood covering Mesopotamia and Saudi Arabia would not have affected sea life, especially if it occurred when sea levels were low (no Persian Gulf).
Don't you think that even the birds would have found land on the earth at the time of the flood if it was local?
God’s purpose in sending the flood was to kill them too. It likely covered 1.5 million square miles. The 40 days of rain must have been severe enough to ground and drown them. Severe storms like hurricanes can blow them far off their migration courses, destroy their habitats and the birds can starve from not being able to forage in the severe weather. All of this would have been true during the flood's storm. http://www.enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=580
How can you believe that Christ died on the cross and take that as fact when you can't take something as simple to believe as the flood and believe that to be true? To me it just makes perfect sense that there was a global flood.
I do believe in the flood. The Bible just does not say it was global.
Murray, this is what a local flood would look like if it were to be what the Bible says and what you believe at the same time.If the Flood were a local flood, God would have repeatedly broken His promise never to send such a flood again. God put a rainbow in the sky as a covenant between God and man and the animals that He would never repeat such an event. There have been huge local floods in recent times (e.g., in Bangladesh); but never has there been another global Flood that killed all life on the land.
No local flood has since destroyed the whole human race and the land and animals associated with them (Gen. 9:11, 15). So, God never broke His promise. It is always a good idea to see what God actually said.
Did you read some of the Biblical evidence for a local flood, which I posted on page two of this discussion?
No, the use of the phrase "and there was morning and there was evening" doesn't mean in all instances that it's speaking of a 24 hour day. It's an idiomatic Hebrew phrase that means there are defined starts and finishes and a prescribed time surrounding it. The very components necessary to define a 24 hour day, meaning the earth, sun and moon were not present in relationship to one another until the 4th day which begs the question as to what measure of time can you apply in the first 3. Further making a claim that every instance of the phrase means a 24 hour day is circular. Where else in Scripture do you find the idiom? The context of the immediate verses is what determines it's use, not an arbitrary forumula that circles back to itself.
The use of ordinal numbers too is not universal with regard to 24 hours days. Please look carefully at this article from our main site:
Note the reference to Zechariah 14:7 which uses the word yom combined with echad in exactly the same manner as it is used in Genesis 1:5.
Repeating claims doesn't make them true and circular logic is no proof of anything.
regards,
Bart
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
As far as your discussion of the meaning of day (yom), the meaning is determined by context, not statistics.
For instance, what do you say about this?
7th Day
First let us look at the “7th day.” It does not have the phrase “and was evening and was morning.” The seventh day is separate from the six days of work. Instead of on the seventh day, closing the sixth day with “and was evening”, God simply closes off the workweek (Gen. 2:1). “And was morning” is not used on day seven, because it is not the dawning of another workday. The whole 7th day is God’s rest (Gen. 2:2-3):
“2. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
“3. Then God blessed the seventh dayand sanctified it, because in it He restedfrom all His work which God had created to make.”
In the New Testament we are given more information about this day. Hebrews 4:1-11 reads:
“1. Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
2. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
3. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, ‘AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST,’ although those works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4. For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day, ‘AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS’;
5. and again in this passage, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’
6. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience,
7. He again fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.’
8. For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that.
9. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
10. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
11. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.”(NASB)
The writer of Hebrews could not have been clearer; God’s “SEVENTH DAY” has not ended. Throughout Hebrews chapters three and four we are told that we may enter into God’s rest. The only places in these chapters that His rest is defined are in 4:3-4 and 9 where it is defined as the Seventh day of creation and is called "a Sabbath Observance/Keeping." Yes, we enter through faith, but it is God’s Sabbath rest we are joining Him in!
Jesus says the same thing in John 5:17:
“But He answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’”
Why did Jesus make this statement? He had just been accused of breaking the Sabbath (John 5:7-18). Jesus had healed a man and told him to pick up his bed and walk. The Jewish leaders considered healing a “work” that should be done during the first 6 days, not on the Sabbath (see Luke 13:14, 6:7, Matthew 12:10).
God is not of this world, so He is not constrained by our Sabbath. The only way Jesus’ argument makes sense is if He is referring to the Father continuing His “works” of compassion as well as directing and sustaining creation (Heb. 1:3 and Col. 1:17), while His Sabbath rest from creating new things is ongoing. Likewise, Jesus was doing a “work” of compassion, not occupation or labor, on the earthly Sabbath.
One young-earth creationist, Andrew S. Kulikovsky, has attempted to counter the seventh day argument by saying that the “rest” of Hebrews 3 and 4 is the Kingdom of God. The first thing to point out is that the “Kingdom” is not mentioned anywhere in the text. As mentioned above, we may join God in His “rest” through faith, but the way in which we enter by no means defines what we are entering into. Second, as shown above, verses 3-4 and 9 actually define the rest as the “Seventh day” and “a Sabbath keeping.” The fact that the Sabbath observance is equivalent to the Seventh day can be seen in Moses’ writings. By comparing the way Moses restated Genesis 2:2b-3a in Exodus 20:11 we can see the equivalence.
Gen. 2:2b – “…and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.”
Ex. 20:11a – “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day…”
Gen. 2:3a – “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it…”
Ex. 20:11b – “therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Notice how Moses replaces the words “seventh day” in Gen. 2:3a with the words “Sabbath day” in Ex. 20:11b.
Exodus 31:15 also puts the seventh/ Sabbath connection together as well as the Sabbath-keeping/observance. Here it reads:
“Six days you may do work, but on the Seventh day, a Sabbath (Shabbat) of Sabbath Observance (Shabbaton), holy to the Lord; everyone that does work on the Sabbath (Shabbat) must die.”
The Greek noun suffix "ismos," used in Hebrews 4:9, denotes the act, state, condition or doctrine of. So the Greek word sabbatismos actually means "a Sabbath observance." Of course the Sabbath is observed through resting, which is what the text is about. So, the Greek Sabbatismos and the Hebrew Shabbaton seem to be equivalent terms, meaning – Sabbath keeping or observance; which is accomplished by resting from work.
The author of Hebrews seems to be using Moses’ own words when he defines the rest that we may join God in as the seventh day of creation (Heb. 4:3-4) and then says that "a Sabbath keeping" or "a Sabbath observance" (sabbatismos) remains for the people of God (Heb. 4:9). The seventh day of creation, in which God is adhering to sabbatismos, is the rest that we may join Him in, through faith.
Cankuster post, above, about Zech. 14:7, so I'll skip it, but what about Hosea 6:2?
Hosea 6:2 is a prophetic call to repentance by Hosea himself and is another place that numbered days may be long periods of time.
“He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him.”
Interpreting verse two should also be done in light of Hosea 3:4-5, where Hosea taught that they would be in this desolate state for "many days." In fact verse five indicates that their condition would remain until "the last days." That these days were long periods has been taught by both Jews and Christians.
In the Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin, Folio 97a, Rabbi Abaye said that each day in Hosea 6:2 was 1000 Years. Abaye died about 339 A.D.
“Rabbi Kattina said: ‘Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate, as it is written, And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.’ Abaye said: ‘it will be desolate two [thousand], as it is said, After two days will he revive us: in the third day, he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.’”
John Calvin also felt that this referred to long time periods:
“What did they understand by two days? Even their long affliction; as though they said, ‘Though the Lord may not deliver us from our miseries the first day, but defer longer our redemption, our hope ought not yet to fail; for God can raise up dead bodies from their graves no less than restore life in a moment.’ When Daniel meant to show that the affliction of the people would be long, he says,
‘After a time, times, and half time,’ (Daniel 7:25.)
That mode of speaking is different, but then as to sense it is the same. He says, ‘after a time,’ that is, after a year; that would be tolerable: but it follows, ‘and times,’ that is, many years: God afterwards shortens that period, and brings redemption at a time when least expected …. They therefore said, After two days God will revive us; and thus they confirmed themselves in the hope of salvation, though it did not immediately appear: though they long remained in darkness, and the exile was long which they had to endure, they yet did not cease to hope: ‘Well, let the two days pass, and the Lord will revive us.’”
Ok guys/gals, I'm sorry for jacking the thread and making it into something it wasn't intended. To get back to the actual subject of the ark and flood:
To rebuke some of you who don't believe that the flood was global and don't think that the animals could have traveled from continent to continent, the flood was global, there is evidence everywhere and as geologist Dr. John Morris from ICR (Institute for Creation Research) said it wouldn't have had to take multiple thousands of species to cross the land bridge from modern day Russia to North America, it would have only taken the few kinds of animals to reproduce the hundreds of thousand of species you see here today. Same for the people who must have migrated via landbridge to populate the americas. Someone asked how could the pinguins get to antarctica, Dr. Morris and multiple colleges of his believe that there was a (or the) ice age after the flood caused by the earth trying to regain equilibrium causing (obviously) large amounts of ice to form at the north and south poles, (a lot more than you see today). This would make it possible for pinguins to swim to the ice only a short distance away. Then the ice melts and glaciers disappear into the ocean and you get modern day Antarctica. I really can't give you any more information than that about the migration of animals and people for the seminar I went to didn't cover much on this subject.
Here's there website, they have over 40 years of info on this website: www.icr.org
The "using ice to traverse the Earth" idea is still silly. For instance, how did warm-weather birds and other animals survive traveling across the frozen Earth? And even for the penguins, what did they eat while making their thousands-of-miles trek? Even if the world were to go through an ice age, the waters of the Earth could not totally freeze over without killing practically all sea life. Also, all water life would die in a global flood due to salinity imbalances from adding water to their environments (either creating too much salinity, or too little).
In short, there are way too many problems with a global flood.
Bovey wrote:Ok guys/gals, I'm sorry for jacking the thread and making it into something it wasn't intended. To get back to the actual subject of the ark and flood:
To rebuke some of you who don't believe that the flood was global and don't think that the animals could have traveled from continent to continent, the flood was global, there is evidence everywhere and as geologist Dr. John Morris from ICR (Institute for Creation Research) said it wouldn't have had to take multiple thousands of species to cross the land bridge from modern day Russia to North America, it would have only taken the few kinds of animals to reproduce the hundreds of thousand of species you see here today. Same for the people who must have migrated via landbridge to populate the americas. Someone asked how could the pinguins get to antarctica, Dr. Morris and multiple colleges of his believe that there was a (or the) ice age after the flood caused by the earth trying to regain equilibrium causing (obviously) large amounts of ice to form at the north and south poles, (a lot more than you see today). This would make it possible for pinguins to swim to the ice only a short distance away. Then the ice melts and glaciers disappear into the ocean and you get modern day Antarctica. I really can't give you any more information than that about the migration of animals and people for the seminar I went to didn't cover much on this subject.
Here's there website, they have over 40 years of info on this website: http://www.icr.org
Hope you guys find it useful.
Bovey, I'm glad you're doing research on this topic. You do realize that most of us OECs are familiar with icr? It is a young earth creationism site. Asking an OECer if they're familiar with ICR, is like asking Eliot Ness if he knows who Al Capone is.
Here's a good article about Rapid Post-Flood speciation, and how a YEC must hold to evolution, if he believes in what you're saying. http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/speciation.html
John 5:24 24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
-Edward R Murrow
St. Richard the Sarcastic--The Patron Saint of Irony
