Jac3510 wrote:tetelesti wrote:Saw this video on WND about "why a young earth" is foundational to the Christian faith. Found the whole premise irritating because I thought that Christ crucified was the foundation of the Christian faith, not whether the earth was young or old. This video seems to imply that any view outside young earth creationism is heretical, which seems to echo the underpinnings of Ken Ham. Apparently it's worse than that since the author of the video, David Rives, sells Kent Hovind's "creation seminar" DVD on his website.
You're using the term "foundational" differently than they are. You are thinking of the basic essence of the faith in the sense of that which is denied is to go on to deny the faith itself. They are using the term in the sense of the most basic support. There are OECs on this board who have (rightly) argued that if Adam and Eve never existed, then the faith is, in this sense, undermined, because there is no historical basis for the Fall. It is this sense of "foundational" that has led the Catholic Church to affirm that, whatever one believes about the age of the earth or evolution, one
must believe that Adam and Eve were historical figures, the pair from whom all people today descended.
So on their view, YEC is foundational in that sense because OEC requires death was in the world before sin. The normal OEC response is that the death that came from the Fall is spiritual death. The real difference, then, in YEC and OEC is not soteriological (pertaining to salvation) but eschatological (pertaining to the end times, kingdom, etc.).
By the way, this is the final reason that I was persuaded that YEC is the biblical view. OEC advocates are simply wrong when they think that the death introduced into the world by sin was human death and/or spiritual death.
An interesting part of the video is were David Rives states that "
most Hebrew scholars agree the wording indicates a literal 24 hour day." Wasn't it Sir Isaac Newton, in the 17th century, who was the first to translate Genesis in the original Hebrew text, giving us a greater understanding of the word "day"? Prior to that didn't scholars and the patriarchs only translate the Greek text (Septuagint), thus leaving us with a translation of a translation? The remaining claims stated in the video seem rather baseless, if even worthy of debate.
"
For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/why-is-young ... important/
No, Newton was not the first person to translate or work from the Hebrew scriptures. I have no idea where you even got such an idea. To take only one example, Jerome worked from the Hebrew OT (much to the chagrin of some Catholic scholars). Beyond that, the LXX vs. MT has no bearing on this discussion, anyway. The Hebrew word is
yom. The Greek word is
hemera. Those two words are as synonymous as any two words can be in any language. To try to suggest that
yom can mean a long period of time and that
hermera . . . well, that's just incorrect. In fact, one of the interesting things that LXX scholars will point out is that the LXX is a VERY "wooden" translation of the Torah, but that is not at all the case in later parts of the OT. And that's something I can also attest to, having read significant portions of both the Hebrew OT and the LXX.
Beyond all that, though, the argument they are making is just silly. It doesn't really matter what the majority of Hebrew scholars believe, even if they could prove their claims. What matters is what can be shown, and if the majority are wrong, then they are just wrong. The only question we should be dealing with is what does
yom mean in Genesis 1. I am convinced, after looking at
every single occurrence of yom in the Torah and Joshua (604 occurrences, each classified individually in its various state: construct, absolute, with prepositions and without, (an)arthrous, etc.), that there is absolutely no doubt based on the way the word is used (from a strictly linguistic perspective) that Moses intended the word to mean a normal, 24 hour day, and any assertion to the contrary is completely baseless, absurd, and ignores the textual evidence as we have it.
But that's just me.
...
...to back up their beliefs.
