Confused

[Seeker]

It seems as thought the more i read the bible the more doubt rises in me. For example in Genesis chapter 6 it mentions that humans can not live longer than 120 years but people have lived longer than that. Also in the same chapter it talks about there being giants but we have no archealogical evidence of such beings. Another one that has been bothering me is revelation chapter 13 it mentions an animal i just cannot bear to believe to be real. it just seems made up. Please Help

Zeth.

[B. W.]

It seems as thought the more i read the bible the more doubt rises in me. For example in Genesis chapter 6 it mentions that humans can not live longer than 120 years but people have lived longer than that. Also in the same chapter it talks about there being giants but we have no archealogical evidence of such beings. Another one that has been bothering me is revelation chapter 13 it mentions an animal i just cannot bear to believe to be real. it just seems made up. Please Help

Zeth.

Hmmm, biblical metaphors, it looks like you are reading metaphors and symbols as facts.

Gen 6 concerning age limit - this is an average age give or take a few years on either side... Look into commentaries on this

About Giants - there are several explanations but if you look into this more the metaphor and idiom usage of giant you might grasp this better. For example: Napoleon Bonaparte was a giant of a man. However he was only around 5 feet 7 inches tall. Giant can denote greatness of some type or height. Take your pick.

Rev 13 is symbolism - when you have a dream - what do you see? Some times things hard to explain. So is it the symbol of the beast mentioned that bothers you or the image of the beast that bothers you?
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[PaulSacramento]

It seems as thought the more i read the bible the more doubt rises in me. For example in Genesis chapter 6 it mentions that humans can not live longer than 120 years but people have lived longer than that. Also in the same chapter it talks about there being giants but we have no archealogical evidence of such beings. Another one that has been bothering me is revelation chapter 13 it mentions an animal i just cannot bear to believe to be real. it just seems made up. Please Help

Zeth.

I echo what B.W said.
I add that, in regards to "giants" you need to realize that we TODAY use the same term.
Look at the likes of Andre "the Giant", or the likes of Shaquile O'Neil or Minut Bol, I mean, for us in North America, were the average height is about 6ft, we see a 7 footer and we call them "giant" so imagine a 7ft'er when the average height was 5-5 or something like that.

We shouldn't get to worked up about the way things are worded in ancient text when we have ample evidence of the same "literary freedoms" being taken today and no one makes a big deal about them.

To be honest, it almost looks like you are nitpicking with these "issues".

[Kurieuo]

I'd think it a non-issue, especially for anyone who believes in evolution.

Why should we expect a skeleton? It's not like we find many skeletons from that time lying around. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence... and historical references are by no means nothing.

Couldn't it have just been something akin to a reverse effect to their biology that pygmies have?

[Philip]

Seeker, the first thing you should do is begin a study of how we received the Bible, of how we can have a very high confidence that the Bible we have today is the word of God, and that He has protected it in every important way. Until you have a confidence and understanding about this, you will be like a leaf blown by the wind, as many things you don't understand in Scripture will leave you doubting and questioning, and some of them can really become huge stumbling blocks. There is much good info on this on this site - some might suggest other specific info on it.

Get a reference on Bible difficulties - "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties" by Gleason Archer is one.

Study the issue of inerrancy - here's a couple of references:

http://www.jashow.org/wiki/index.php/Bi ... nce-Part_1
http://www.jashow.org/wiki/index.php/Bi ... nce-Part_2

Study the criteria for how the Bible canon was received:

http://www.jashow.org/wiki/index.php/Th ... _the_Bible

Here's a look at how the Bible's canon developed:
http://www.gotquestions.org/canon-Bible.html

Here's a good method for interpreting and applying Scripture:

1. Find the meaning intended by the HUMAN author (remember, God divinely inspired and guided the human authors in what to write).
a. Base the study on the historical, physical, and cultural setting
b. Research each clear and important word.
c. Analyze the sentence structure.
d. Examine the grammatical context.
e. Identify and decode figurative language.
f. Interpret the passage in light of it's genre (narrative, wisdom lit, poetry, prophecy, didactic).

2. Find the meaning intended by the DIVINE Author (God!).
a. Compare scripture with scripture.
b. Establish a harmonious whole.
c. Seek explanations for apparent discrepancies.
d. Use biblical guidelines for understanding predictive prophecy.

3. Apply it to your life.
a. Receive every teaching of Scripture for yourself unless the Bible limits the audience, either in the context of the passage itself or in other Biblical teaching.
b. Respond in faith and obedience to both the direct teachings and the principles of Scripture.

The above should be a good start!

[PaulSacramento]

While I believe that the bible contains God's message to Us, I do not believe the bible is THE Word of God.
Christ is the Word of God.
Nothing makes "sense" other than in the "light" of Christ.
IMO, we can't separate the human writers and editors and copyists from the bible.
The bible is, IMO, the message of God in human words, written FOR Us all.

[Jac3510]

While I believe that the bible contains God's message to Us, I do not believe the bible is THE Word of God.
Christ is the Word of God.
Nothing makes "sense" other than in the "light" of Christ.

And neo-orthodoxy marches on!

IMO, we can't separate the human writers and editors . . . from the bible.
The bible is, IMO, the message of God in human words, written FOR Us all.

Fixed that for you. Now, I can agree with this.

[PaulSacramento]

While I believe that the bible contains God's message to Us, I do not believe the bible is THE Word of God.
Christ is the Word of God.
Nothing makes "sense" other than in the "light" of Christ.

And neo-orthodoxy marches on!

IMO, we can't separate the human writers and editors . . . from the bible.
The bible is, IMO, the message of God in human words, written FOR Us all.

Fixed that for you. Now, I can agree with this.

You have issues with the word "copyist" ?

[Jac3510]

You have issues with the word "copyist" ?

When discussing what can or can't be separated from the Bible and inspiration, I do. No one in their right mind would ever suggest that the Bible cannot be inerrantly copied, but no one also argues that copy mistakes impugn inerrancy in any way, either. In other words, I agree that we can't separate the human writers and editors from Scripture. What they worked on still constitutes the autographs. The copyists? They're completely separable, and in fact, they must be. I mean . . .

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotton Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."

So now I'm a copyist. I hope we both wholeheartedly agree that I have to be separated from Scripture! The only time I need to be noted at all is when I incorrectly copy Scripture, and the only point of doing that is to get to what Scripture actually says. So the conversation isn't really about me even then.

[Philip]

OK, can someone take an original document, copy it,and yet leave his copy with various errors that in no way changes its message or our complete understanding of the original's intent and content? Of course he can! Can someone with good but very ill-conceived intentions copy a a book but in one chapter he thought the ending wasn't balanced with those of other chapters. And so he tried to harmonize the chapter in question with the other chapters by adding a few extra paragraphs, leaving us with a document that has this minor addition - an addition that in no way changes ANY meanings or concepts within the original source document. Sure. Can we compare many ancient manuscripts that are COPIES and be able to see where and when any addition to the original source documents were made? Absolutely - all it takes is enough manuscripts, historical clues and information concerning when they were likely written, comparing them with known historical data, etc. In fact, I would say, given an adequate number of copies, historical data, etc that the contents of the originals could be determined without God overseeing them.

But the Bible manuscript copies and the original autographs' inspiration, guidance and protection WERE all part of the process which God protected and guided. But He protected all important MEANINGS and original/easily discernible CONTENT - he wasn't concerned about irrelevant misspellings, goofs on correct word order, uses of wrong but similar sounding words (where the intended/correct word is easy to deduce). God cares that we know what was in the originals, which can be known with a high level of confidence. This is why I said that God "has protected it in every important way."

In fact, IF God had instead waited until our modern, digital age to have his word recorded, in which ALL original "autographs" were digitally, letter for letter identical to each other and still in existence - think that would satisfy the cynics living hundreds of years past the years of the digital "autographs?" Nah - they would just assume that key, early church insiders controlled and harmonized all the originals, as that would be the only way that they could be so perfect/identical. So, in fact, it is truly the human element that makes incredible harmony between so many ancient Bible manuscripts so miraculous, while also giving them their authenticity. This couldn't have happened without God protecting them. And yet, they are clearly written in human hands - both originally and by their later copyists.

[Jac3510]

Can someone with good but very ill-conceived intentions copy a a book but in one chapter he thought the ending wasn't balanced with those of other chapters. And so he tried to harmonize the chapter in question with the other chapters by adding a few extra paragraphs, leaving us with a document that has this minor addition - an addition that in no way changes ANY meanings or concepts within the original source document. Sure.

Of course that's possible. It's also possible for people to completely change the content of a book because they don't like it for whatever reason.

The question is whether or not they can legitimately do that, and in the case of Scripture, whether or not such a practice was legitimate (which, for us, means whether or not it was part of inspiration).

Here, I think the general answer is no. With some notable exceptions (all in the OT), inspiration is limited to the original texts, which is to say, the autographs. Copyist errors--whether intentional or not--leave us with uninspired variants in the inspired text. That raises all sorts of questions. Theologically, we can ask if, and if so to what extent, God protected the transmission of His Word. Critically, we can ask to what extent the original text can be recovered. Practically, we can ask how certain we can be that we can know what the author was originally saying.

That's why I go back to my comments to Paul in saying we have to separate the copyists from the authors/editors, and why I agreed with his general thrust that we cannot separate the human from the divine author. I assume your example here, philip, has the ending of Mark in mind. Now, that question is an interesting one (one I'm undecided on, by the way). But suppose we decide the ending is not original--that Mark did not write it. Then we have one of two possibilities: 1. we either say that God inspired a later editor to add something to the text (which I believe is the Catholic position in this particular case) much the way He did with some OT texts, or 2. we reject the ending (as well intentioned and probably reflecting widespread early Christian theology and thus very informative for historical theological studies yet) as uninspired. In either case, we don't get to separate the human from the divine author. When people do that, they usually do it to justify eiosgesis in some particular passage. They can't find the meaning they are looking for in a particular text, and so they appeal to some other text and then read what they find back into the original text because, after all, God had that in mind even if the human author didn't!

That's just bad hermeneutics. We ought not engage in that type of exegesis. To take but one example, the serpant in Eden is often argued to be Satan. The problem, though, is that the text doesn't say that. The identification is made in no small part by combining (illegitimately, in my view) passages like Eze. 28:13, Job 38:7, Rev. 12:9, and 2 Cor. 11:3. Now, even if this argument succeeds, we cannot say that Genesis 1 teaches that Satan was in the Garden. We would have to say that 2 Cor. 11:3 (for instance) does (and here presume that Paul's readers had the requisite background theological knowlegdge to make the connection). At best, then, we could say Genesis 1 allows for the serpant to really be Satan, a fact that the rest of the Bible later confirms. For the record--and totally as an aside--I actually don't think the argument succeeds as popularly imagined, but I think that Satan and the serpant are so closely related that we can be forgiven for taking the former as a shorthand of the latter (for a biblical instance of this same type of agency being identified as the subject of an action, cf. 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Chron. 21:1).

So my point, to clarify and emphasize, is that we should not allow ourselves to reread earlier texts in light of later texts and thereby find interpretations of or meanings in them that are foreign to the original works as written in their own contexts. We don't get to appeal to the Single Author to justify that procedure, which is another way of saying, we ought not try to separate the human from the divine author. Far better to say with Scripture that Scripture is inspired, which necessarily entails a human author even as the final words themselves are God's own. The Bible then allows no space between the "two authors" and neither should we.

[Philip]

Jac, I was merely speaking to the differences in variants - that they still can be understood as to what the intent and content was - that spelling, letter and improper word placements, etc (the vast majority of the so-called "errors) don't keep us from seeing what the intent was or limit our ability to find harmony amongst the variants. Yes, people could also change something entirely - but when a later manuscript and subsequent ones suddenly have things that many much older ones don't have, then that must be suspect. Of course, it doesn't necessarily prove that it has something not in the original autographs, but it does make it suspect.

Yes, I was referring to the last part of Mark (picking up snakes, etc). But only to make the point that, even if wrongly added/uninspired, in copies that have otherwise known Scripture, it still changes nothing of substance or takes away from the content of the rest of Scripture. However, I tend to believe that the ending verses of Mark were added to provide an ending more in harmony with the other Gospels - I believe this because: 1) The verses in question are not in much older manuscripts and 2) while they could refer to "signs" and abilities of believers that were only available and meant for a limited period of 1st century time, I see them as encouraging believers to put God to foolish, dangerous and unnecessary tests. Every year or so, in the hills of Tennessee and Kentucky, some pastor falls dead to a viper bite. Quite a few respected scholar translator teams have flagged these verses with footnotes warning of their concerns.

Of course, on the original autographs were without any "errors." But I believe that scholarship shows we can have a high level of confidence in today's better translations being extremely close to the originals. The further we get away from events described, any manuscripts with previously unknown portions have to be questioned. Of course, many of the false/"lost" so-called "gospels" are FAR after the historical events they describe, with radical scholars claiming they are far older than they actually are, along with the malicious use of such "lost books" to challenge the teachings found in Scripture. We see this tripe just about nightly on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, etc.

Jac, what OT passages would be inspired post the original autographs? Editors? Say, as when parts of the Books of Moses speak of his death? Thanks.

[Jac3510]

I understand what you were saying, philip. Textual Criticism is a helpful science to clear up the very variants that create some difficulties in choosing between somewhat significant variants.

I was simply commenting on Paul's comments that we ought not distinguish between the divine and human authors, and I was pointing out the hermeneutical implications (and what I take to be errors) that follow such a distinction.

And yes, the accounts of Moses' death provide a good example of editorial inspiration.

[Philip]

Thanks, Jac. Yep, the cynics always love to focus on the fact that men wrote the Bible. And yet He also works through us "fallible" men to accomplish His Great Commission. WE wouldn't have chosen such flawed vessels to do so - but He did and does. So, clearly, our deficits are no hindrance to the desires, directives and guidance of our all-powerful Almighty God! If He can speak a universe into being, inspiring His handpicked servants to write exactly what He wanted them to - and then protecting it as He so desired - are just other indications of His sovereignty and power over all He has created.

[Kurieuo]

Here is a very good and relevant video someone put together on the type of "errors" non-believers generally point to.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4aLT-2dKXQ[/youtube]