Dare I?
The Bible is not a science book.
No one says it was.
It was never meant to be a science book.
Yet it does cover real events that happened.
Trying to get science out of it is futile.
The Bible may not be a science textbook, but the things it says are verifiable. That means science can be done to test it.
It was meant to say the things that it was meant to say and no more.
Proverbs 25:2
The first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) otherwise known as the “five books of Moses” are also called the Torah (Hebrew, “law”) and the Pentateuch (Greek, “five books”). Moses was not a witness to Eden, the Flood, etc., so let us remember that.
No, but he was directly inspired by God to write them.
Forget Moses, God has an accurate recollection of the events that transpired before Moses came around. He could have told Moses what to write down.
And on top of that, there would have been verbally passed down histories via Abraham and his ancestors.
The four Gospels are mostly eye witness accounts. The “five books of Moses” are not.
So what?
Now, Moses did know about Abraham and others from stories passed down, so that helped. But still, not an eye witness.
You seem to be forgetting that what Moses down was inspired by God, who IS an eye-witness to what happened.
To understand the authors intention, we must understand the culture, the literary styles in use at that time, and the ways speaking and narrating.
What is said is easily understandable by the modern reader. All they have to do is read it.
Facts are differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writings.
No, they're really not. Sure, some things might be hard to understand without the context, but the context is the surrounding scripture.
Or what, do you think that God gave us an incomplete book?
God speaks to man in a way that man can understand, and man will express that in the ways of speaking that are the norm of the time.
Do you not consider the Bible to be understandable by man?
So God "inspires" Moses: God enlightens Moses mind to the knowledge that God created everything and that God created man in his own image. And now God is setting about to heal the rift created by Adam and the Fall. And this is the story that Moses tells in Genesis. He does so in a manner of speaking and culture of his people.
So it's all supposed to be a figure of speech?
If so, what does the figure of speech mean?
My position is that it's NOT a figure of speech, but that what God said happened that Moses wrote down happened EXACTLY as was written.
And that's it. It is as simple as that.
Timelines, dinosaurs, all that irrelevant stuff that people argue about, none of it has any place in the Truth that God want us to know.
So just toss it out of the Bible then, is that what you're suggesting?
God wants us to know that He created everything and that God created man in his own image.
Which he tells us how He did so, and in quite literal terms.
About 7,000 years old. Using geneologies, carbon dating, and more, we know this.
Let scientists deal with that.
There's nothing wrong with learning about the past, Red.
The Bible does not say, even though some people think it does.
It doesn't give a straightforward "The earth is X years old at this point in this story," no.
But it does give anchor points which we can use to determine roughly when things happened.
For example, we know that the Flood happened around 3290 B.C.±100 years.
Scientifically:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ211.html
And Biblically:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ212.html
As I said, reading the Bible means understand the authors intention, and explaining how old the planet is was not his intention.
Which doesn't mean that we cannot know how old the planet is based off of what the authors said.
It is unseemly for Christians to argue about things that have nothing to do with Jesus.
The Creation account in Genesis is FOUNDATIONAL to understanding what the Bible says about Jesus. I will show you why below.
The age of the earth has no bearing of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
I beg to differ.
It has a TREMENDOUS bearing on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus said a lot about the Creation week, the Flood, and the history of the earth provided in Genesis. If any of that is not as He said, then that makes Jesus a liar.
Honor God by treating the Bible as what it was meant for, to tell the story that God wants to be told, not by arguing about the petty issues of man.
There's nothing petty about discussing the true history of the world.
That's my position, and I stand by it.
:yawn:
