A while ago a reader named Greg left a comment on the thread, Did God Create the Laws of Physics? He prefaced it with “WARNING: LONG COMMENT AHEAD,” which was certainly fair notice. I thought his questions might better be dealt with on another thread, and he gave me the okay to do it that way.
Here is the majority of what he wrote that day. (He had other questions that I am saving for yet another post.)
I think the atheists are debating the wrong questions. It’s not about finding out the truth of metaphysical questions, such as whether God exists or whether this world is basically good or everything is part of a plan. When it comes to things we can neither prove or disprove, belief is a matter of personal choice, and Christianity is as valid as any other philosophy.
No, it’s about the actual claims that every religion makes about historical events. Either they happened, or they didn’t. Some adherents would claim infallibility of their books, others would admit that people might have made mistakes here and there. But including, for example, entire chapters devoted to describing fictional events would make one wonder how those chapters ended up in the Canon. For example there is a claim of a giant global flood around 2104 BC after which the rainbow was created as a sign of God’s covenant with Man.
What bothers me is that I think that science HAS uncovered a lot about what happened on Earth, and historians have likewise been able to piece together a consistent story through cross-referencing. And the pictures that result are as far from the Old Testament stories are they are from Greek mythology! (For example, both have a flood that is equally hard to believe.) This is what bothers me. As Karl Popper would say, a theory is scientific insofar as it makes non-obvious testable predictions, and I believe religions have managed to do that by their claims about what happened as well as their prophecies. And I believe that these claims have been amply falsified. This makes it extremely hard for me to remain in my faith.
Can you please reply from your point of view as Christians how you would address this? I fully agree with you that if the Holy Spirit is working within a person, then nothing can get the person to lose their faith. This is by definition, but it is kind of a tautology also. Of course, if God wants something to happen, it will happen. But that having been said, it seems I am not at that level. My problems are NOT simply those of a skeptic. Being skeptical is almost never a way to convince someone else that their position is wrong. Rather, my problems are because I think the claims which most adherents believe as “gospel truth” have been disproven every which way by 20 independent scientific and historical endeavors. The key word is independent. If they were all part of some grand plan, then one might say that there was a bias. But they did not set out to disprove the stories, it just happened. And what do I do now?
Finally, let me illustrate where my difficulty lies. All orthodox Judaism (read: not the reform movement, who are basically agnostics) believes that there was a real, global flood as described in Genesis. It had to be global because if it was local, no one would need to build an ark for 40 years and save all the earth’s animals. In addition, the dry genealogical chapters after the flood record the passage of time and place the flood in the Jewish year 1656, which is around 2104 BC for us. This is a serious problem! Egyptians were building the pyramids before the flood (of Djoser and Cheops, for example) and smoothly transitioned into the middle kingdom. The earth is full of unsaved animals — and in fact, hominids! — in geological layers which indicate they have been evolving for millions of years. The Jews also believe the Tower of Babel story, which happened after the flood, and that Hebrew was the first language, but this is contradicted by the Law of Hamurrabi and the Egyptian tomb inscriptions, plus probably much more.
Jesus himself understands the flood to be literal, or at least there is absolutely no evidence to think he does not. He mentions it as if he believes it was a historical fact! This is to be expected, as Jews at the time — just as orthodox Jews do to day — believed it to be historical fact, given to Moses by all-knowing God!
I always tell my Jewish friends, that if you ignore the atheist problems with Judaism and make the leap, you might as well ignore the Jewish problems with Christianity and make the leap to that also. Because the problems in both cases are immense.
Now you may have a position not to take these stories literally. Keep in mind that all true Orthodox Jewwish thought that I know DOES (I have asked a lot of rabbis, and they in fact affirm that they are not aware of anyone even in the Talmud suggesting the flood was not literal). One would also ask why entire chapters are devoted to a fictional story. Jesus himself mentioned the story as one mentions a historical fact, and uses it as a way to illustrate what will happen in the future with his very real return!
This is what the Jews really believed happened during the flood:.
The ancient israelites may have had a book with even more detail on the subject (including as I hear Noah’s wives, etc.) called “the book of Jubilees”. It may or may not have been Pseudepigrapha. But if they did have such a book, then they spent even more time writing about a story that seems to have been disproven by a bunch of independent disciplines!
All this DISPROOF of FALSIFIABLE CLAIMS made by the old testament makes it hard for many thinking people to be faithful followers of Judaism, or of Christianity or Islam for that matter, as they are both based on the veracity of the Old Testament. True, there are some views that Christianity is entirely separate from Judaism and that the god of the NT is in fact a completely different god than the one of the old testament, but the vast majority of Christians regard this as heretical.The Jews should definitely reject this, due to Deuteronomy 13.
Both Jews and Christians believe that God, the same God that Jesus calls “My Father,” dictated the Torah to Moses (“face to face, as a man speaks with a friend”, Exodus 33:11). And we believe that the Torah is indeed almost perfectly transcribed to us today in the form of the first five chapters of our modern Bible (or in the case of Jews, the Masoretic text of the Tanakh). As I said, this presents a significant problem for me. “Don’t take the bible literally” does not seem to be an orthodox, or indeed a responsible view, for either Christians or Jewish teachers. For whatever it is that the people believed, they certainly believed their writings. As I said, Jesus himself did, but all the other faithful Jews did as well. I can prove it to you if you like.
Thanks for your time. I would appreciate if you would share with me how you deal with these difficulties yourself.
Sincerely,
Greg
There’s a lot there, and I cannot respond to all of it. The first thing I want to say is that you are exactly right, Greg, to say that Christianity makes definite historical claims, and if those claims (at least the central ones) are wrong then Christianity is falsified. You go beyond the facts a bit when you speak of the “claims that every religion makes about historical events;” for not every religion is situated in history as Christianity is (and Judaism before it). But for Christianity (and Judaism, which I will not repeat mentioning from this point), you are quite right.
You are also right to say that the findings of science and history should agree where they overlap, and if they disagree, then either science, history or both must be wrong. The same goes if we substitute “religious belief” for either science or history.
You say, “if the Holy Spirit is working within a person, then nothing can get the person to lose their faith.” I agree with this because I am convinced that the whole picture of Christianity is true and it all holds together. Not all would agree, but that’s okay, because it’s not really the question you’re asking anyway. The question you’re asking is about the publicly accessible facts, and whether they hang together.
A small point: I don’t believe God dictated the Torah to Moses, other than the Ten Commandments he inscribed on stone. Rather he worked with and through Moses’ personality to produce a result that communicated exactly the truth God wanted to be expressed. Another small but important point: virtually no one relies on the genealogies to date the events in early Genesis. That view has been deprecated for a long time now, in view of the fact that biblical geneologies often skip generations.
The relationship between Jewish and Christian belief is not my area of expertise, so I’m going to punt on that one.
Finally, for the last of the quick answers I can give, you say,
“Don’t take the bible literally” does not seem to be an orthodox, or indeed a responsible view, for either Christians or Jewish teachers. For whatever it is that the people believed, they certainly believed their writings.
To this I would say yes and no. Yes, we should take the Bible literally, but not always “literally.” Some of the Bible’s language is intended to be figurative. The figurative language is literally true in what it affirms, but what it’s affirming is the figurative, not the plain literal sense of the words.
That’s the easy stuff. Now for the Flood.
The facts surrounding the Flood remain unresolved in my mind. Geological evidence for a true global flood is lacking. There does seem to be geological evidence for a regional flood in and around Mesopotamia, and there is also reason to believe this is consistent with the biblical account. I find no contradiction here with Jesus’ understanding of the Flood. This, to me, is the most satisfying explanation out there at present, though I don’t feel fully settled about it.
So where does that leave me? It’s not entirely satisfactory, I’ll admit. I’d love to have a nicely wrapped-up answer to the question of the Flood, but I don’t. Consider where this stands in the larger scheme of things, though. I am persuaded there are strong grounds for confidence in the overall message of Scripture. We have especially strong reasons to trust in the historicity of the Resurrection and the rest of the Gospel message. I know with high confidence (for reasons I don’t have space to detail here) that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, began an itinerant ministry as an adult preaching and demonstrating the Kingdom of God, claimed to be God himself, was killed, and rose again to a glorified life. On the one hand I know these things, which, if they are true, constitute the heart of our hope. On the other hand I have questions about the Flood. My questions about the Flood bother me in the sense that they nag at me and leave me, as I said, somewhat unsettled; but I can see at least one credible explanation for the Flood that respects both science and Scripture, so I can live with that.
I wrote a post once called Young Earth, Old Earth, and Not Having to Know the Answer. The principle I was trying to express there was that there are some things that are still unsolved and unresolved, and that’s okay. I think that applies to the Flood, too.
So I hope that helps. We can continue the conversation, at any rate! I’ll return with answers to your other questions later.
_______________
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
I agree with you, not every religion makes falsifiable historical claims — I have overstated that part. But Judaism and Christianity certainly do.
Let me make one thing clear: Judaism, the original religion from which Christianity comes, makes definite claims about the flood: it literally happened. There is some minor debate about whether it was local or global, but almost every Talmudic authority and every rabbi that I know of who has ever written about the subject takes this story as completely literal. As for a local flood, it is hard to believe that Noah would have to build an ark for 40 years, save all the animals on the earth, including Koalas in Australia, if the flood was local. He could have used those 40 years to just move. The chapters say that every living thing on the earth was killed, save for those on the ark. The word (“eretz”) could imply a particular land, or it could imply the whole world. I believe the story is quite clear about it being the whole world.
As for the chronology: this is the biggest problem. The chapters after Noah are written as a list, and they are intended to record the generations. To see how serious they were intended to be, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Noah .
There have been many traditions but generally, both Jews and Christians have placed it in or around 2104 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah's_Ark#The_Ark_in_later_traditions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah#Christian_views
Of course, this completely contradicts established history – for example of the egyptians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt
I agree with you that there has been considerable controversy about interpreting chronology from genealogy, and yet, it is hard to see how a statement such as “When A was B years old, he begat C. And after he begat C, he lived D years and had other sons and daughters.” can be true in any sense unless it is literally true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology#Ussher.27s_chronology_today
Professor James Barr (then Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University) wrote in 1984:
…probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that… the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story…
If you look at the string of genealogy statements, I think you will find two things:
1) The only way the chronology could be off, or generations can be skipped, is if one of the records as I described above is factually incorrect. If the Book is given by God, I would submit that this cannot be the case.
2) Regardless, if we assume the flood never happened, we have a direct lineage from fictional characters to real people, which is a problem. Once again, the Book given by God should never contain such things.
Unless I am missing something, that would imply that the particular Book in question (Genesis) is not dictated by God.
Greg,
Thanks for your question and response.
I do not hold “Judaism” to be authoritative. Its perspectives are informative as they give insight into how the original text might have been intended to be interpreted, but the question remains, “What was the intent of the original text?”
Wikipedia’s articles on the chronology are uninformed. As I understand it, very few Christian scholars today consider the geneaologies to be complete, and so they do not regard them as sources of information for pinning down precise dates. Perhaps someone here can provide more insight connected with your quote from Professor Barr. I’m certainly willing to be shown I’m wrong if I am.
You say,
Which fictional characters? Who’s assuming the flood never happened? Not me. I mean, if we were to assume the book of Genesis is fictional, then a good conclusion to draw from that assumption would be that the book of Genesis is fictional. You could save time and skip all the in-between steps concerning genealogies, dates, etc. But we haven’t come to agreement on that assumption, have we?
Right. I know that you have already said you don’t think that the Torah was dictated to Moses by God. Jews would point to Exodus 33:7-11 and Deuteronomy 31:24-29 as clear indication that God was speaking to Moses, and gave him the Torah. But once again, all these things are open to interpretation.
I personally wonder if the “Book of the Law” is the same as the Pentateuch we have today. It seems to me that a later tradition ascribes the Pentateuch to Moses. There is no evidence or claim in the Pentateuch itself that it was written by Moses, and instead it seems to speak of Moses in third person as everyone else, describe events after his death, and proclaim that there has never been a great prophet than him “to this day”. This would indicate that it was written later, and the “Book of the Law” is in fact in the Ark of the Covenant, whose whereabouts we are not sure of at the moment.
That said, my point with the flood is this: it is an example of critically approaching claims made by a tradition. Perhaps the book of Genesis is not central to YOUR Christian tradition, and invalidating it will not invalidate the truth of Christianity. Here is my point: Christianity, as all other religions, comes in many different forms. Some believe one thing, and some believe another. But common to most traditions are several claims. I would like to know what these claims are, and I would like to investigate what support these claims have. When you don’t believe a religion, such as Islam, you may do so by saying “there is no significant evidence for it at all”. But once you believe Islam, the only way for you to change your mind is to notice problems with it. This is what my main point is. I think that all these traditions made claims which seem to be 100% true from literal reading — and indeed were believed as such at the time — but that don’t match reality when investigated, and those are significant problems.
Once again, I have no problem with a leap of faith, but then if one starts finding serious flaws with the claims, one needs to re-evaluate their position. Just to name a few for Christianity:
* In Mark 13:2 and Matthew 24:2, Jesus predicts that “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” — referring to the Temple buildings. Yet today, we have the entire Western Wall, which is the holiest place of prayer for the Jews right now. Wikipedia says: “It is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Jewish Temple’s courtyard, and is one of the most sacred sites in Judaism outside of the Temple Mount itself.” Surely the wall of the courtyard may have been included in Jesus’ prophecy? How truly is truly?
* In the accounts, Jesus visits places in ways that not only seem to violate the actual geography, suggesting the author was unfamiliar with the area, but in fact visits places that prophets in scripture said will not exist. See for example Ezekiel (26:14, 21; 27:36, 28:19) vs Matthew 15:21 . This would make one doubt the other details of the story of Jesus’ life, and certainly miraculous ones such as the virgin birth might be called into question, as the author clearly wasn’t present. How could they possibly know that?
* Claims that Jesus is the Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to save the Jewish people from their enemies, and gather them in Israel, and usher in an era of world peace, all the way until the end of the world comes. Followers of Jesus, and Jesus himself, claimed that he is the messiah. But Jesus did not seem to gather all the Jews of the world in their land. Moreover, after Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection, the Jews were dispersed through all the nations, often persecuted by the very Christian church, and world peace has not only not taken place, but in fact the Church itself engaged in and funded many wars.
* Jesus has promised: “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.” This suggests that Jesus’ second coming is very close to 30 AD. After all, the reward mentioned here already follows what everyone has done, and is in accordance with it. Certainly it cannot precede works done by people who have not yet lived. In Matthew 16:28 as well as Luke 9:26-27, Jesus is recorded as saying, “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Although this may be construed as Jesus’ victory over death, Mark 13:23-30 makes it abundantly clear that the End of Days is being referred to. And once again, Jesus says that the contemporary generation *will not pass away* before these things have happened. But they did pass away.
Therefore, one may be skeptical of the Christian doctrine that the gospels about Jesus, which claim he is the Son of God, and Messiah, hold the correct message about him. Please note that I am not approaching this as a skeptic saying “there is very little evidence for the belief”, but rather, take the core doctrine at its word and see if there are any serious problems with it. There seem to be major problems. Finally, there is one very serious problem:
Christianity assumes that the Law of God was given by God to the Jews, and was binding on the Jews by the authority of the God of the universe, at least up until Jesus’ death and resurrection. But in their own law, Deuteronomy 18:22 precludes Jews from following Jesus after the generation has passed away and the prophecies I mentioned above did not come true. Any apologetics for that prophecy seem to be elaborate or hang by a thread. Why would God make such a precarious position for the Messiah?
Anyway, all these things would make one doubt the central doctrines of Christianity, as one doubts the doctrine that Genesis was dictated by God to Moses.
If Christianity is true, I would of course want to believe it. Just like if Judaism is true, I (as a Jew) would want to follow the law. But upon discovering serious problems of this sort, you would agree that they would be enough for you to completely discount a religion you have not grown up with, such as Islam. It is pretty strong evidence that the doctrines may be entirely mistaken. If you have any information on at least some of these problems, I would definitely benefit a lot from hearing what it is. I think I have laid out the case pretty straightforwardly. If this was a religion you are not following, it would be more than enough to convince anyone, but since we both take these religions seriously, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. We want answers.
Gregory,
I have seen few, if any, skeptics come on this site and ask as many honest and as well informed questions as you have. I don’t have the expertise to even begin to answer them. However, there are some very good sources out there especially where it comes to the New Testament. One I know of that is held in high regard is Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony”. It is neither short nor light reading but is comprehensive in its analysis of the New Testament.
As far as your focus on the historicity of the flood I would make a general comment. The Bible has always contains mysteries, some historical, some theological. Some of them have been revealed already. Some will be revealed in the future and some will only be revealed when all is said and done. A large amount of the historicity of the Bible and especially the New Testament has been shown to be true. The fact that some might never be shouldn’t, in itself, be definitive in rejecting its overall validity.
Fair enough. I am able to ask these questions because this kind of thing has been troubling me for a while, and I have thought about these issues for a long time. I wonder if there are answers out there to these sorts of questions. If this was a religion which we did not already believe, then these kinds of difficulties would probably preclude us from studying it any further. But like I said, both you and I are already in it, and because there is a chance they might be true, I will continue to search and try to find answers.
If you have any more information or ever write a post about these issues, definitely drop me a line, because i am curious myself. But you can see why, if I was simply following logic and reason with no fear for the consequences after death (Pascal’s wager), it would seem to me that atheists are right and these religions were simply more elaborate mythologies. It would explain why there are no public miracles today of the magnitude claimed in the writings. But because of the claims of consequences in the life to come, I will continue looking.
Was Tyre Ever Rebuilt?
“The modern city of Tyre is of modest size and is near the ancient site, though not identical to it. Archaeological photographs of the ancient site show ruins from ancient Tyre scattered over many acres of land. No city has been rebuilt over these ruins, however, in fulfillment of this prophecy.” (Dennis and Grudem, “Tyre,” The ESV Study Bible)
“In point of fact, the mainland city of Tyre later was rebuilt and assumed some of its former importance during the Hellenistic period. But as for the island city, it apparently sank below the surface of the Mediterranean…All that remains of it is a series of black reefs offshore from Tyre, which surely could not have been there in the first and second millennia b.c., since they pose such a threat to navigation. The promontory that now juts out from the coastline probably was washed up along the barrier of Alexander’s causeway, but the island itself broke off and sank away when the subsidence took place; and we have no evidence at all that it ever was built up again after Alexander’s terrible act of vengeance. In the light of these data, then, the predictions of chapter 26, improbable though they must have seemed in Ezekiel’s time, were duly fulfilled to the letter—first by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century, and then by Alexander in the fourth.” (Archer, “Tyre,” Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties)
http://www.padfield.com/1994/tyre.html
Gregory,
You have repeated this as your basic understanding a couple of times. “If this was a religion which we did not already believe, then these kinds of difficulties would probably preclude us from studying it any further. This is not true. In fact, the weight of evidence has made many scholars conclude that the burden of proof has shifted to the skeptics as far as the historic validity of the NT is concerned. Further, there are certainly very good answers to the questions you raised in your post #3. I’m sure many others here could suggest further sources or even provide those answers.
As I said, A) I would be very happy for someone to publicly address these issues I have raised, and drop me a line so that I too can learn whatever plausible explanations there could be. And B) To be honest, I hear a lot about “historic validity” of the NT — and I feel that Christian scholars are very confident about it — but I really wonder where the confidence comes from. If someone can write a post summarizing the case for our certainty in the Christian doctrine, I would very much like to read it, because I want to share it with others who say Christianity has a very flimsy case. I would be thrilled to be able to provide them with actual evidence that STRONGLY suggests that Christianity is true. I am aware of no such evidence. Rather than responding with a comment, please write a blog post about it and link to it from these comments. I think evidence for Christianity deserves a full discussion of its own.
Let me just quickly summarize what I know of the basis for today’s Christian belief. I might be mistaken about some things, which would explain why I don’t know of any strong evidence for Christianity. We basically have no writings from Jesus. We have writings from Paul, who claimed to have seen Jesus in an overwhelming experience from Damascus. This experience, whether real or some sort of epileptic fit, changed him, much like Martin Luther when he was struck by lightning.
We know Paul was a devout and zealous Jew, and we know that people like that can have a lot of anxiety and be wound up really tight. Paul then completely changed and rejected his former faith. Instead of meeting up with the disciples of Jesus, he went to Arabia and there he taught his own gentile disciples, relying only on his own revelations. In his writings, Paul hardly mentions any of the details of Jesus’ life that the gospels do. Given the opportunity to illustrate his points strongly with accounts from Jesus’ life, he has no such accounts to draw on. For example, his argument for the resurrection is long winded, whereas Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead should have been an easy example to give. Anyway, then we have anonymous writings appear after 70 AD, and which are later given names: Matthew, Mark and John. According to the majority viewpoint, Matthew is unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness, and John is unlikely to have been written by John the apostle. Luke wrote his own gospel as a historian, despite not being present at the events, as he discovered Christianity through Paul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_canonical_Gospels#Authorship_and_date
After this, many more writings about Jesus appeared, with various conflicts between Gnostics, Judaizers, and Docetism. For example, the Gospel of Thomas, rejected by the church, depicted Peter and Matthew as being unable to understand the true significance or identity of Jesus, and attributes leadership of the community to James the Just rather than Peter. It seems to agree with Paul and the traditions predating 70 AD. The Gospel of Peter is generally considered by scholars to be pseudepigraphical (bearing Peter’s name but not written by him), but contains an alternative view of Jesus.
As the Church was deciding which writings are authentic, we can read some interesting letters they wrote. Serapion, Bishop of Antioch in 190–203, said about the Gospel of Peter that “most of it belonged to the right teaching of the Saviour,” but that some parts might encourage its hearers to fall into the Docetist heresy. As such it was excluded from the Canon. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing his book Adversus Haereses in 160-185 AD, denounced groups with only one gospel, writing: it is not possible that there can be either more or fewer than four” he stated, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth and the four winds”. This was the kind of logic that contributed to having exactly four gospels included in the official Church Canon, as made official by the Council of Nicaea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Irenaeus
The Council of Nicaea happened around 325 AD, or almost 300 years after the events surrounding Jesus. Four years earlier, Constantine declared the Sabbath will be on a Sunday. You can find a lot of the controversies and persecutions of people following the original, 7th day Sabbath in this book at the Christian Resource Center, which I found linked from wikipedia and read a bit:
http://www.crcbermuda.com/reference/ellen-white-books-g-m/great-controversy/
In short, it is by no means obvious to me that anything about Jesus’ life or teaching was uncontroversial. Everyone had a different idea and worshipped differently until Church leaders basically declared by fiat what will go into the New Testament, and established the Nicene Creed. Definitely correct me when I am wrong. I took all my facts from reading wikipedia and talking to scholars on the topic. But clearly there’s more to the story if Christians today have such certainty.
As I said, I am not acquainted with all the evidence FOR Christianity being true, but I assume it’s scant and is mostly a matter of faith. I am fine with leaps of faith! As I said, I present only evidence which seems to indicate that the things we have been assuming are wrong.
“As I said, I am not acquainted with all the evidence FOR Christianity being true, but I assume it’s scant and is mostly a matter of faith.” Then you simply aren’t looking. The number of books written on the historic validity of the NT are simply too numerous to list. I’ve already given you one. You could look at the works of William Lane Craig, C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Tim Keller, F.F. Bruce, Josh McDowell and many many more. It really doesn’t seem like you have looked into Christian Apologetics very deeply if you haven’t found at least a few of the authors I listed.
I don’t want to seem harsh here. However, I gave you credit for thoughtful questions and then you link “Wiki” articles about Christianity? Really? That just isn’t reflective of a serious search. I hope you really are seaching for the truth. It’s certainly out there to be found.
Greg, you said,
No, that’s not the case. It is central. To invalidate it would be to invalidate Christianity. To invalidate a certain doubtful interpretation is by no means the same thing, however.
There are lots of good sources on this. If you really want to know, I suggest you get a copy of Josh and Sean McDowell’s The Unshakable Truth. For an immediately accessible resource, check out my free e-book, What Is Christianity? For Jesus’ messianic claims, consider looking at N.T. Wright’s relatively short book The Challenge of Jesus. Wright is an eminent NT historian who will show how the situation of which you speak actually confirms Christian belief.
“Behold I am coming soon” could also be translated, “Behold, I am coming suddenly,” which of course has not been invalidated by the course of history.
The claims of Christianity do match reality when investigated. You’ve already heard from BillT and dgosse on that.
By the way, you’ve invited people to drop you a line. As the blog admin I’m the only one who sees your email address. I won’t publish it here, but if you want an email from someone you might want to include your address in a future comment.
Gregory,
Just a few passing comments.
To be honest, I hear a lot about “historic validity” of the NT — and I feel that Christian scholars are very confident about it — but I really wonder where the confidence comes from. If someone can write a post summarizing the case for our certainty in the Christian doctrine, I would very much like to read it, because I want to share it with others who say Christianity has a very flimsy case.
Putting it this way mixes up a few claims – the historical reliability of the gospels with the truth of Christian teaching are interwoven, but not the same thing. The NT writings are early and from the right people, the gospels are written very close (certainly in a historical sense) to the events they describe, by people clearly writing with an intent to relate actual history, and by authors for whom a strong case can be made that they were either eyewitnesses themselves, or written by people who were in contact with eyewitnesses. But logically, the NT can be very historically reliable yet ultimately Christian doctrines (some, or even all – I’m speaking of logical possibility here) could be false.
There’s also a difference between certainty and confidence. A good argument could be made that we could be very confident (given the evidence, and reasonable historical assumptions) that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty after his death. But utterly certain? That’s an unreasonable standard, because someone can always at least imagine an alternate story which occupies some of the space of logical possibility.
For example, his argument for the resurrection is long winded, whereas Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead should have been an easy example to give.
It depends on what you’re specifically talking about here. But certainly there’s many distinctions between Lazarus and Christ, given the differences of who they were and what their resurrections meant respectively. Further, it’s conceivable that the objections Paul was dealing with were such that Lazarus’ example would have been of little use. (If someone is denying that the dead can be raised, and that therefore Christ was not resurrected, what good is the Lazarus example? “Well, he didn’t rise either.”)
Anyway, then we have anonymous writings appear after 70 AD, and which are later given names: Matthew, Mark and John. According to the majority viewpoint, Matthew is unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness, and John is unlikely to have been written by John the apostle.
The date of when the gospels were written is an open question, as is their authorship. Majority views are important, but so are the arguments for and responses to those views.
As for the NT compilation, I’ll note a few things: 1) The Gospel of Peter is generally agreed to be given a date far later than any of the other gospels – if dates weigh heavily for you, then clearly the GoP is at least suspect immediately, 2) A Gospel doesn’t need to be thoroughly heretical to have been justly excluded from the canon, just as a Lutheran doesn’t need to regard all Baptist beliefs as untrue to (if their arguments are correct) reject Lutheranism, 3) why should it be surprising that there were differences in opinion over what Christ’s life meant? You don’t need to go to the council to understand this – you can go right to Paul’s letters. You can go to Marcion.
Either way, hopefully I’ve come across clearly here. More than that, I want to stress again the distinctions between historical reliability and doctrinal truth, as well as confidence versus certainty.
Ironically, one of the more interesting arguments for the historicity of the Biblical flood comes from, not geology, but anthropology. Not only are there legends of a great flood to be found world wide but there are also some uncanny similarities in some of the details with Biblical narrative.
Young earth creationists (YEC’s) argue that this is further evidence that the flood was global. However, this is not necessarily the only interpretation. For example, Hugh Ross argues that the flood was local but universal. In other words, it was a locally catastrophic flood that destroyed all or most of mankind which was living someplace in the middle east. Ross thinks the flood occurred in Mesopotamia.
Personally, I hold a (small a) agnostic position on exactly how (therefore, where and when it happened) to explain the flood geologically. There are number of different hypotheses. However, I do find the YEC interpretation to be geologically untenable, if not far fetched.
On the other hand, I think the fact that the flood legend is so widespread is by itself very compelling evidence. Here is a sampling of some of the other flood legends. I have concentrated here on legends prevalent among North American Indians, which show very little Near Eastern or European influence.
Papago (Arizona):
Nahua (central Mexico):
Norton Sound Eskimo:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html#Mandingo
BTW other legends that come from north American Indians clearly show some later Christian influence. The one’s that I have cited here do not appear, at least to my non-expert eyes, to have been influenced that way.
Of course, none of this proves the accuracy of the Biblical narrative, however, it does suggest that there was a real historical catastrophic flood that was the cause of these legends. In other words, it’s a place to start.
I don’t think the case for NT historicity can be summarized in a single post, Greg. The best introductory books I know of are:
Here’s one for free, an ebook that comes highly recommended, though I have not read it yet myself: The Historical Reliability of the New Testament.
Hey, guys.
My email can be found on http://magarshak.com
I will try to read The Case for Christ first.
You know, I was just closing the tabs in my browser and I re-read this chapter:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+24&version=ASV
I must say, if anyone knows, can you at least address this part?
Jesus predicts the destruction of the second temple that is so complete, that no stone will be left on another stone
Then the disciples ask when these things will be
Then Jesus describes that the sun will darken, the moon will not give her light, the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,
And everyone shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great glory
And finally Jesus says,
“Verily I say onto you, This generation shall not pass away, til these things are accomplished.”
But they did pass away. And it’s been 2000 years, and the end of days has not yet come.
This bothers me. A lot.
In the same chapter, Jesus continues:
“And as were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man.”
Since I believe a global flood could not have possibly happened, this bothers me too.
But more importantly, what make you of this prophecy?
* About the stones – an entire Western Wall is left
* About the end of days – the generation did pass away
What is it all supposed to mean?
Gregory,
The problem with your question is that it isn’t a sound methodolgy to get an answer to the question you first asked. “If Christianity is true, I would of course want to believe it.” If that is what you really want to know then you need to investigate that. You need to get an overall understanding of the veracity and historicity of the text and the theology it explains. If you work backwards, from the difficult details of the Bible toward it’s meaning, without any overall context, you will never get to an answer.
A new book dealing with the issue of pseudonymous authorship of the New Testament is making some waves.
I can’t get to the link right now, but there are good reasons not to take this book seriously. Maybe another commenter can help with that…
Yes, Bart Ehrman. His methodology is to take an acedemic subject that 99.9% of the people in the world know nothing about (like Elaine Pagels did with the Gnostic Gospels) and rewrite it in a “popular” book. That way almost no one who reads it will figure out how much of this he is making up (a lot!). Last time he released his acedemic version first and everyone laughed at it. Then he rewtote if for the popular market and sold a bunch of books to the new atheist crowd. This time he’s reversed the releases so he can make his money before he gets killed by the scholars. His work has been discredited before and will be again.
You have to understand that what Erhman writes about has been written about, hashed and rehashed in acedemic circles for decades and decades and really much longer than that. The authorship of the NT isn’t an open question. Erhman wites a book that is orders of magnitude outside of well accepted acedemic thinking and get the press to hype it because it’s orders of magnitude outside of well accepted acedemic thinking. If someone were to write a book the was this far outside of any other acedemic subject no one would look at it twice much less publish it.
It’s easy to dismiss the book without even looking at it. However, Ben Witherington, the Amos Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, is taking it seriously enough to review every chapter. The link I provided is the first review in the series.
Bart Ehrman is a known comodity. Of course, peolpe will review him. He gets a lot of press for saying “controversial” things about the Bible. Gee, where have we seen that before. That people will take the time to refute him or laud him doesn’t make him legitimate.
Apparently some people take him seriously enough. Erhman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An endowed chair at a major research university is nothing to sneer at.
Yes, I was well aware of his big acedemic title. Liberal acedemic at a big liberal university questions biblical authenticity. Wow, I’m so impressed. A real dog bites man moment.
Really olgert, go peddle Erhman somewhere where folks don’t know what’s going on. There must be some athiest site somewhere where they are all in a tither about this.
No reason to get so agitated, Bill. Just ignore this.
No, really olgert. How would you feel if I told you about the great new book by William Dembski and touted his acedemic titles as some reason for you to take him seriously? What? Your reaction would have been any different from mine was about Erhman.
With respect to the Western Wall (maybe someone has mentioned this already), it was the wall of the courtyard of the Temple complex, not the wall of the Temple itself. Is this a meaningful distinction? Well, I suppose it depends on what sense one gives to the words of Jesus: “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another”. Were his words i) an emphatic (and not necessarily literal) way of describing complete destruction (e.g. “he was torn to shreds”), ii) a completely literal prediction about the temple AND its surrounding structures, including the wall of the courtyard, or iii) a literal prediction only about the temple itself, symbolic of God’s judgment on his defiled house of worship?
I see nothing that forces us to choose option ii). Options i) and iii) were certainly fulfilled. I think it was Josephus who recorded that a long-burning fire consumed the temple and melted the gold fixtures. The Romans then had to pull apart every stones to get the gold that had melted into the cracks. Which is more compelling: the (confirming) fact that the Temple was destroyed in a non-trivial way that involved not leaving “one stone on another”, or the (potentially disconfirming) fact the Western Wall of the courtyard remains intact? Should we say that Jesus’s prophecy, which foretold the very real and horrific event of God’s judgment on the Temple and Jerusalem, was true in content but false because of a technicality?
With respect to the end of days, the generation not passing away, etc.; there are, of course, many interpretations. There’s the preterist view (which I do not hold) that all the events Jesus described were actually fulfilled before the last of his disciples died. I don’t know a whole lot about this view, but proponents point to aspects of Jesus’s prophecy that were fulfilled, including false Messiahs who claimed they would save Israel from Roman domination (Mt. 24:4-6, 23-26), war between the nations of Israel and Rome (v. 7), great persecution of Jesus’s followers, accompanied by apostasy (v. 9-22), etc. We know that all these things actually happened. Where the preterist view runs into trouble, in my opinion, is v. 29-31, which says that “immediately after” the historical events described in v. 4-26, Jesus will come on the clouds with angels and trumpets and will gather his elect. Maybe there’s a way to fit this description to the events of 70 AD, but it seems like Jesus is speaking of something more catastrophic, more final than that.
So if preterism isn’t true — if the prophecy of Mt. 24 wasn’t totally fulfilled within one “generation” (v. 34) — then is Jesus a false prophet? In answering this question, there are two important considerations: i) what is the meaning of “generation”, and ii) how are Biblical prophecies typically fulfilled?
When using the word “generation” (which a footnote in my Bible says can also be translated “race”), was Jesus referring to a window of time that would end when all people currently living had died, or was he using the word in another sense? Elsewhere in the gospels, we do hear him rebuking his listeners as “you wicked and perverse generation/race!”. It is somewhat doubtful that he meant to condemn the people living at his time, and exalt their ancestors by comparison. Rather, it seems more likely that he was either rebuking the “race” (= generation) of God’s chosen people for their stubbornness (like God and Moses did during the 40 years in the Sinai desert), or he was using “generation” as a metaphor for the strain of sinful rebellion against God that runs through all of humanity. Either way, his words in Mt. 24:34 (“I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened”) are still true, in that the Jewish people still exist as a distinct “race”, and humanity is still a wicked and rebellious “generation”, in the eyes of God.
Finally, the fruition of Biblical prophecy often takes the form of a “double fulfillment”, with an event in the near future (w.r.t. the prophet) accomplishing an outline or partial fulfillment of the prophecy, but with the complete, final fulfillment left to the far future (a so-called “type-antitype” scheme). I think this is one of the most important points, but unfortunately I don’t have time to muster all the examples for it. One example that comes readily to mind is Isaiah’s prophecy of the virgin birth: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Is. 7:14). Isaiah originally delivered this prophecy to king Ahaz, and said that this Immanuel would be a sign that God would deliver Ahaz from an attacking army. Some people think that this prophecy had an immediate fulfillment when Isaiah’s betrothed wife bore a son (ch. 8). Christians believe that the final, complete fulfillment was the Virgin Birth of Jesus. With this prophecy, people often argue about the meaning of “virgin” (almah): does it really mean “virgin”, or just “young/betrothed maiden”? In the first (partial) fulfillment, Isaiah’s wife was clearly not a virgin when she bore a son (Is. 8:3). But in the second (complete) fulfillment, Luke claims that Mary was an actual virgin. This example highlights the principle of escalation, where the second (complete) fulfillment of a prophecy is an amplification of the first (partial) fulfillment. dgosse (#6) gave another example of a double-fulfillment prophecy: the destruction of Tyre (the principle of escalation can be seen there too). Applying this principle to Jesus’s prophecy in Mt. 24, I think it’s pretty clear that the events up to and including 70 AD were the first (partial) fulfillment of the prophecy, while the second (complete) fulfillment is still to come at The End. (I think preterists mistake the partial fulfillment for the complete fulfillment, and try to stretch the former to fit the latter).
Someone will undoubtedly object that “if prophecies can be fulfilled twice, and the first time only partially, then what good are they at predicting the future, and what use do they have in authenticating the Bible as the word of God?” To which I would respond that the purpose of prophecy is not primarily to predict the future, and never to answer the question “when?”. Jesus, despite giving a detailed prophecy about the end times, never directly answered the disciples’ question of “when will these things happen?”, saying “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. To approach a prophecy expecting a detailed timeline of future events is a waste of time. God has no interest in giving us that kind of knowledge. Rather, he wants to let us know what kind of trouble we will face (so we can prepare for it), and what steps he is taking to defeat evil (so we can have hope), not when it will all happen (so we can lay around and take it easy until then). Secondly, I don’t think authentication of divine authorship is the primary purpose of prophecy. If, as a secondary benefit, someone becomes convinced that the Bible is the Word of God because he/she is amazed by the fulfillment of prophecy, then that’s great. But prophecy is primarily a warning and/or assurance for those who already follow God (or claim to be following God, but need straightening out), not an apologetic for unbelievers.
BillT wrote:
That wouldn’t work very well, Bill. Dembski’s academic titles aren’t something to brag about.
The title gets Ehrman some attention. It doesn’t make his writings trustworthy.
About this exciting news on Bart Ehrman presented by physicist cum religious scholar cum ID critic cum evolutionary biology expert, but certainly not a culture warrior, Olegt:
http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/04/ehrmans-forged.html
BillT:
Per the usual atheist MO we’ve seen so often here, Olegt has just employed a veiled genetic fallacy (from where a person is or what the source is rather than the truth or falsity of what they say) AND then foolishly depends upon argument from authority in the vain hope of making a reasonable point. You caught him on it with your Dembski example.
Olegt is cherry picking for anything–even if his approach is fallacious and leads him to questionable, ideologically-burdened sources–to support his a priori commitment and disordered world view known as atheism (which is his problem in the first place). Not a smidgen of reasoned argumentation was provided: olegt merely “threw it out” as if it were sufficient to challenge critical thinkers. He is behaving anything but scientifically.
The only thing which I agree with olegt on is that indeed you need not get agitated and you should ignore it–as one should (per Aristotle) always ignore fallacies and sophists… like olegt.
Olegt did you actually read Witherington’s review?
Here are some points that jumped out at me.
However, the Gnostic gospels were never part of the NT canon so they cannot be used to indict it.
(Bold emphasis added by me)
It sounds to me is that while on the one hand, Witherington is bending over to be fair to Ehrman, on the other hand, his overall review of the book is quite critical. Witherington is to be commended in being very objective in his approach. Sadly, the same cannot be said of Ehrman whose popular works are not only sensationalistic, but very misleading to the uniformed layman.
Yes, JAD, I did. I’m glad to see that you did, too. Others on this thread just decided to shoot the messenger and complain about fallacies. My poor irony meter blew up.
“That wouldn’t work very well, Bill. Dembski’s academic titles aren’t something to brag about.”
Did he really write this after touting Bart Erhman. You wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t read it. The only reason Erhman has any career is by riding the coattails of Bruce Metzger. Erhman’s a pariah in serious acedemic circles.
So let me get this straight.
Those of you who are Christian here hold the following view:
1. There is really good evidence FOR Christianity, by studying the NT and considering alternatives. To you, there are somehow big reasons to believe that the writers of the NT (despite writing anonymously, 40 years later, having some of their writings thrown out, etc.) as well as the Church leaders who followed them (despite infighting, spurious arguments about 4 winds / 4 corners of the earth etc.) all followed the actual life of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of a virgin, was the actual Son of God — probably even God himself for whatever reason, betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, and died on the cross.
I am not asking facetiously. But I cannot imagine what kind of evidence you have. Can anyone at least sketch one line of argument for me? Keep in mind though that there have been lots of people in history who fell for false messiahs like Shabtai Zevi (ascribing him miracles), cult leaders like Marshall Applewhite, prophets like Mohammad, etc. So the mere assertion that people didn’t recant their revelation stories and went to their deaths is not enough. Martin Luther would have done the same for his views, and that does not make them true – only shows that he believed in them. Especially in the ancient world, where disproving such things was very hard to do, this was more common. I could probably give tons of examples.
So the argument showing that Jesus birth, life, the truth of his teachings, and subsequent resurrection, and his identity, are very strongly implied by the evidence, has to be something I have no idea about.
I welcome hearing it, because I want to have something to tell the doubting skeptics who tell me there is no actual evidence for the doctrines of Christianity – only weak and ambiguous evidence at best.
2) Once you believe, nothing will convince you otherwise, including apparently falsified prophecies. Fine, Jews are like this too. Chabad Jews never compromise, they always say the world is less than 6k years old, the first days were actual days, and the flood literally happened all over the world. They say science will one day come to see their view. Prominent thinkers say that God is actually hiding himself in this world, and therefore science does not reveal the truth until Moschiach comes. I can respect this sort of reasoning, at least, because it is consistent, even though I don’t believe it myself.
but what about #1? Are the arguments for Christianity that complex that they cannot be summarized or some proofs sketched? I can sketch several proofs for Judaism, and I have:
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=90
Greg
Maybe Erhman is not fresh and exciting to others on this thread as he is to messenger Olegt. Maybe others have already checked him out and are only pointing out that Olegt’s meters are all
blown already.
‘My poor irony meter blew up.”
You who didn’t offer a single fact, argument or reason to recommend Erhman. Your poor “James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill” irony meter blew up. Yours wasn’t the first, olget. Further, Witherington’s review and JAD say just what I did about Erhman. What’s your point.
BillT,
The purpose of my comment was to point out the book and a related discussion at Witherington’s blog. You were free to follow the link and find out for yourself what Witherington and his readers thought about it. Instead, you started badmouthing Ehrman. You are free to do so, but I am also free to point out in response that he is not exactly a nobody.
Gregory,
There isn’t a 10 second sound bite answer to the questions you are asking.
Try these articles if you want to start somewhere:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=popular_articles_Jesus_Of_Nazareth
Hi Greg,
I wouldn’t worry too much about the skeptics, if I were you. You can spend years of your life playing whack-a-mole with them. One might show up who doesn’t even believe Jesus ever existed and then, years later, realize that He not only did but was Crucified and that His Disciples actually thought, three days later, that He had been Resurrected. But this doesn’t mean this skeptic will take his new-found realization and use it to alter the world-view that led him to that skepticism in the first place – humanly speaking, that skepticism is impervious. When piece after piece of the rationale for it disappear you’d expect the skepticism to be weakened, but it isn’t.
And then, when you turn around, there will just be another skeptic with disingenuous arguments, anyway, and you’ll have to start all over again.
olget,
And you didn’t badmouth Dembski? And if I’d linked to a discussion about him you would have certainly checked it out? Come on. This is a serious site with knowledgeable posters of which I occupy probably the bottom rung. I wouldn’t go to Telic Thoughts and challange you with an unqualified Dembski reference. I think more of you than that. How about some respect for your fellow posters.
Bill,
It wasn’t my idea to compare Dembski to Ehrman. You asked for it, you got it.
But it was your idea to recomend Erhman based on nothing but his acedemic title in spite of his very questionable reputation. And somehow you think I’m the one who “asked for it” (and) “got it.” Nice grasp on reality there olget.
Speaking of olegt’s “grasp” on reality, one must always check atheists’ largely erroneous assertions and emotional outbursts:
Really? Let’s “run the numbers,” shall we? Let’s play by olegt’s fallacious rules:
EHRMAN:
Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary (magna cum laude), 1985
M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981
B.A. Wheaton College, Illinois (magna cum laude), 1978
DEMBSKI:
Ph.D. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996
M.Div. theology Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996
M.A. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago, 1993
Ph.D. mathematics University of Chicago, 1988
S.M. mathematics University of Chicago, 1985
M.S. statistics University of Illinois at Chicago, 1983
B.A. psychology University of Illinois at Chicago, 1981
Would one ever dare to buy a used car from olegt? By olegt’s own fallacious approach, Ehrman’s “academic titles” (as well as olegt’s by the way) are a joke compared to Dembski’s.
(In the interests of full disclosure, in my and other serious scholars’ professional opinions, we find Dembski’s work—especially in information theory (his insistence on the quantification of meaning—as opposed to information—and assigning probabilities to biochemical events long-long to history) gravely flawed scientifically and reductionist philosophically.)
Holo,
What you have listed are academic degrees. Both Ehrman and Dembski have excellent pedigrees. That is something I have never questioned. The question is what you do with your excellent education. That’s where the difference is.
Academic titles are currently held positions. Ehrman holds an endowed chair at a major research university. Dembski is a research professor at a not-so-major seminary. From your vast academic experience, you should be able to tell the difference.
Ummm… that was anticipated (consider yourself baited… and caught again: hook, line, and sinker – see third paragraph below). You’re floundering olegt BECAUSE, as BillT aptly pointed out and I provided the formal explanation of your fallacious approach: the very way you presented the original salvo was to intentionally lend credence to it simply by stating what was irrelevant.
(We can play this tit-for-tat game, olegt, all you want: say, by comparing awards, honors, and research/teaching positions held by these two gentlemen… but this, again, would leave egg on your face.)
BUT, that’s not the worst of it: despite our clearly catching your fallaciouness… YOU JUST DID IT AGAIN: is it relevant at all what the “currently held positions” are, or the actual truth content of their claims? Is it even possible for you to make a point without leaning on some fallacy? Honestly and objectively, if I were the head of your academic department or the dean of your school, would your nonsense give me any confidence in your ability to reason? A Ph.D. does not a wise person make.
Drop the atheism, olegt: it’s killing your ability to reason.
Holo,
I am not going to bother with a lengthy response to your rants. It was not me who brought up Ehrman’s credibility or Dembski’s titles anyway. Talk to BillT about these.
As to the subject of deans and department chairs, these bureaucratic positions don’t necessarily signify high academic achievements. (At least, that’s how things are at major universities.) Endowed chairs do.
And yet you then claim,
No, of course you didn’t bring it up: you championed it… which makes you a bald-faced liar… even while leaving aside the fallaciousness.
Gregory,
There is really good evidence FOR Christianity, by studying the NT and considering alternatives.
But the replies in this thread haven’t limited themselves to ‘studying the NT’, if by that you mean “reading the NT and that’s it”. It has included historical evidence, evaluations of those ‘other gospels’ you’ve mentioned, etc.
You mention that some Christians “had some of their writings thrown out”. But the only example you gave that I can see was the gospel of Peter, which is dated by most far after the four gospels. It seems that, given your standards, you yourself would agree that said gospel should have been considered suspect.
You also mention ‘apparently false prophecies’, but there have been responses in this thread indicating that no, the examples you gave weren’t false prophecies at all. Misunderstood perhaps, but not false. Not to mention the difference between going to death for a belief, and going to death for a belief known to be false (say, claiming that one saw the resurrected Christ despite not having actually seen Him.)
I’d like to ask this: You mention people believing something and at that point no amount of evidence can change their minds. Well, is it your view that the New Testament does not reliably communicate Jesus’ life and teachings, and that prophecies made by Christ were false, period, and no additional evidence will change your mind about that? If so, I’d say you should let everyone know now, since at that point it’d be clear that you’re asking for evidence to accept Christian claims, while having a position that would make that a pointless effort.
Wrong again, Holo.
My comment mentioning Ehrman’s academic title was preceded by a comment from BillT:
Try again.
Sorry, olegt: your intentions through the fallacy of using Ehrman’s academic credentials are fully transparent, and I stand by my words.
The fallacy was BIllT’s, Holo. He attacked Ehrman’s credentials instead of attacking the book. Direct your wrath at him.
olget,
Just where in the paragraph of mine you copied do I say a word about his credentials? The word is not used. I do not refer to his credentials in any other way. The paragraph, as I stated, is about “his methodology”. (See words #4 & #5). You’re the one who first raised anyone’s credentials in your post #22. I raised Dembski’s as an example of how credentials are not indicator of acedemic validity. Did you really miss all of that?
Crude:
Maybe I spoke incorrectly. When I say “studying the NT”, I don’t just mean reading it. I mean I want to know the case for believing Jesus has risen, was the Son of God, Paul is absolutely inerrant, etc. For each Christian claim, starting with the most basic / provable, I would like some argument that strongly supports this from the evidence. For example, the fact that Jesus lived can probably be supported very well with evidence. On the other end of the spectrum, the doctrine of the trinity is 300 steps ahead and is has scant, if any, scriptural support, and is heretical to the very Jews that Jesus said he came to save. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that says you must believe in the trinity in order to get saved. Just a doctrine formulated later and used to kill people with different ideas such as the execution of Michael Servetus by Calvin. So I hope I illustrated the gamut here.
My position is not that “no amount of evidence will change my view.” On the contrary, I consider the position of religious people to be this way, and they themselves admit this. Dr. Craig would certainly admit this. I wonder what he would say if Jesus would appear before him and say, “listen, they made up all this stuff about me! I didn’t actually do any of this! God has sent me to tell you that.” You would need to rule out equally or more probable possibilities. Jews believe that Jesus used kabbalistic secrets that you were not supposed to use. How do you rule out this possibility? Other people believe someone stole the body. It is a reasonable assumption.
What I am saying is – I am aware of strong evidence against Jesus being the Messiah:
* He did not gather the Jewish people in their land as prophecied, nor did he save them from their enemies, nor did he usher in an era of world peace lasting until the end days
* The writers writing about him got the geography wrong. I also pointed out that Tyre, a city that Jesus supposedly went to the banks of, was not supposed to exist according to the same prophet Christians cite as foretelling Jesus.
* Some of Jesus’ predictions did not come true in any sense except if we redefine “generation”. Whenever the word “generation” is used in the Bible, it refers to the actual generation. Also look up the latin “Saecula”. It is a single period of time in which humans are born and die. If we do not redefine the word generation, please tell me in what sense “this generation will not pass away before all these things are fulfilled” (including the clouds of heaven, etc.) is true. It is done and over with: the generation passed away AND the judgment and end of days has not yet come.
* There is a lot of evidence that Judaism itself is based on a mythology, that developed gradually and was codified around 1600 probably in Babylon captivity. It would also explain why Ezra was surprised the Israelites did not know about a lot of the stuff. If Judaism is a mythology, then certainly the whole Jesus thing cannot be true. So if you prove Christianity is true, that would amazingly also prove Judaism is absolutely true!
Jews have prophecies that say that people will arise among them who will do miracles but will be false prophets. How do you know that Jesus was not among them?
I need strong evidence. I need a good argument. So no, I am open to changing my mind. But as I said at the outset:
with no evidence one way or the other, belief is a personal choice. But once evidence strongly suggests something is NOT true, you need even stronger evidence to show it is true. What is that stronger evidence? I have heard NOTHING except people telling me to read books. I guess I will go read them. But if after the books I come back and tell you that the arguments are flimsy, will you then engage with me?
As you can see, I can readily provide evidence for my views in the space of a comment. Or at least sketch them. Why can’t anyone sketch at least some arguments for the historicity of Jesus. I hope the argument doesn’t just go like this: “some people claimed they saw a vision of X. When threatened with death, they continued to claim X is true and went to get crucified upside down. Therefore, I believe these people so much, that no evidence will ever convince me otherwise.” Because I can bring you examples of this from other religions which you do not believe, and that would be a double standard!
Hey guys can you stop it with the Ehrman crap ? who cares. There are more important things here like the actual truth of the Gospel
Bill,
You repeated several times that Ehrman was not to be taken seriously. I replied that some people apparently do, namely Witherington (you had no objection to me mentioning his title) and the school of arts and sciences at UNC Chapel Hill who saw it fit to give him an endowed professorship.
olegt,
I you opened this part of the discussion with a not-too-cleverly disguised attempt at a stink-bomb. Now you’re claiming all innocence, (also here. It’s not coming off too impressive, in my view.
Here’s the point, and it ought to be all that’s necessary to say:
And it’s about time this childishness came to an end. Gregory has some serious questions for us, and this quibbling on the side is distracting from that.
I didn’t see Gregory’s comment #54 until after I posted #56, but man, do I agree with him.
I’ll delete comments on that topic for the rest of the afternoon, if that’s what it takes. I would have done it sooner if I hadn’t been on an airplane.
Gregory,
I’m sorry your post got diverted to another subject. However, I think that you must start somewhere so that there can be a reference point to the discussion. The William Lane Craig articles I linked are very good and will bring you up to speed on the evidence available for having confidence in the validity Gospel accounts.
Gregory,
There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that says you must believe in the trinity in order to get saved.
And Catholics like myself would say that the Bible is not exhaustive of what we should believe or have good reason to believe about God – there is also apostolic tradition, etc. Of course, it’s also recognized that non-Christians can be saved as well.
He did not gather the Jewish people in their land as prophecied, nor did he save them from their enemies, nor did he usher in an era of world peace lasting until the end days
No, he didn’t. But to Christians, that’s in part because the jews had wrong expectations about what the messiah should be.
* The writers writing about him got the geography wrong. I also pointed out that Tyre, a city that Jesus supposedly went to the banks of, was not supposed to exist according to the same prophet Christians cite as foretelling Jesus.
If Detroit were obliterated tomorrow – wrecked, uninhabited – and three years later I said ‘I’m going to Detroit’, wouldn’t you agree that it would still be clear where I was going?
* Some of Jesus’ predictions did not come true in any sense except if we redefine “generation”. Whenever the word “generation” is used in the Bible, it refers to the actual generation.
The latter claim seems very disputable based on what I’ve read. As to the former, just what Jesus was talking about is an issue with a number of possible understandings – yes, including that ‘generation’ should be used in a way different than you take it.
There is a lot of evidence that Judaism itself is based on a mythology
It’s not clear what you mean here. Sure, judaism probably interacted with other religions at the least (the OT itself says as much), but ‘based on a mythology’?
I have heard NOTHING except people telling me to read books.
But that’s not that case – see Bill’s response at 26, for example. See my own response to you re: the Gospel of Peter and your other questions. Sure, there are numerous book recommendations here – but so what? You were asking for good evidence not only for the truth of Christianity, but to counter a number of concerns you raised that don’t exactly give themselves to short, quick replies – especially if you further go “But what if..?” Are you asking for information, or are you asking for a debate?
Because I can bring you examples of this from other religions which you do not believe, and that would be a double standard!
Why wouldn’t I believe in, say, supposed claims of other religions? There are good arguments that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have at least claims-in-common, even if they obviously differ on particulars. If the question is one of miracles, why should I reject claims of this or that miracle being performed? According to your own view, even the jews expect some false prophets will perform miracles. Granted, this question gets very complicated – but still, it’s worth noting. Further, there’s not a parity between ‘a vision’ and ‘seeing someone who was resurrected’, unless you’re immediately jumping to the claim that anyone who saw such was probably hallucinating.
Gregory:
We really can’t give you the case for everything you’ve asked for in this format. I trust you’re reading the book you said you were going to start with, The Case for Christ.
What you’ll find as you study, though, are things like the following:
- Current NT scholarship, including highly skeptical scholarship, is agreed that at least some of the gospel message is completely trustworthy
- Some of what is almost universally agree to be true includes:
- Jesus was an itinerant preacher and miracle worker
- He was executed by the Romans
- His resurrection was reported by a group of his women followers
- Numerous other men and women had what they regarded as resurrection appearances
- Saul of Tarsus had a dramatic conversion, which he attributed to an encounter with the risen Lord Jesus
- Saul, later known as Paul, received and passed along a report of Jesus’ resurrection (recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8) that was originally circulated among the disciples within 3 to 7 years after Jesus’ death; therefore those who suggested that the resurrection was a late-developing fable are wrong.
- This belief in the Resurrection was circulated very early among those who had every reason and opportunity to disprove it
- But they did not; and Christianity grew on the strength of followers of Christ who (a) claimed the Resurrection was true; (b) had opportunity to know that it was false, if it were, but (c) put their money where their mouth was, suffering and often dying without recanting
- The Bible is regarded as a highly reliable source of information for archaeology.
- No archaeological find has ever overturned any biblical information (misinformation you’ve been provided notwithstanding
This is not the best place to show you why these things are so widely held to be true among NT scholars. I suggest you go to the more reliable and comprehensive sources we have provided you.
Greg wrote:
I think it might be a good approach starting out to keep the historical questions somewhat separate from the theological ones. (Though there will still be some over lap.) In other words, take a critical, but fair and objective look at what can be established as historical in the gospels.
Several years ago, for example, when I had a chance to look at some of these things in real depth I acquired English translations of some of the so called “other Gospels“– the ones that were excluded from the New Testament. I quickly discovered that there was a reason why they weren’t included. They are not well written. In fact I found them to be quite boring and not very informative, if not completely superfluous. By the way, I was trying to approach these writings in a very fair unbiased way because I thought, indeed hoped, they might have historical information that could fill in some of the gaps. In other words, these so-called other gospels accounts were rehash of the canonical gospels with some embellishments that had been added a generations if not centuries later. The embellishments have the quality of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree as a young boy. Nice story, but not something that any historian takes seriously. In other words, it’s not going to add anything reliable to our understanding of Washington.
Unfortunately, some popular writers with an anti-Christian agenda have tried to turn the fact that these other gospels were not included in the canon into some kind of grand conspiracy. My suggestion is read them and judge for yourself.
My own study has led me to believe that the ministry/ teaching, trial/death and burial of Jesus of Nazareth rests on very solid historical eyewitness accounts. This is also true of the resurrection, though that is harder for people with an educated modern mindset to accept.
However, Greg you need to do your own homework. As Tom has pointed out none of us here have the time or expertise to recreate what is already out there. We can point you in a direction suggest some sources to you, including some free ones on the internet, but doing the actual study is up to you.
Gregory,
You’re flooding us with questions on a rather technical subject having to do with history long ago, and with technical philosophy. That’s one reason we’re suggesting you do some outside reading. If you want all those questions answered, you really do need to look them up in books, because those questions are not of the sort that can be answered, all of them, in a few paragraphs.
Can you narrow it down to one question at a time? We could deal with that. That was one reason I split up your original comment to us and addressed the Flood in particular.
In fact, what is your response to the answers we gave on that? We heard from you in part but I think it got diverted before it got worked through.
If you’re satisfied on that one we can always move on, but really, this format is better suited to one topic at a time (which is one reason I’m with you on killing that distraction on Ehrman).
Crude: “And Catholics like myself would say that the Bible is not exhaustive of what we should believe or have good reason to believe about God – there is also apostolic tradition, etc. Of course, it’s also recognized that non-Christians can be saved as well.”
Greg: “Really? Tell me more. What is known about non-Christians getting saved? I thought Jesus himself said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.” That would imply getting into the kingdom of Heaven, right? Now, the only way I can interpret this and allow non-Christians to get saved is if they are able to go “through Jesus” in some metaphorical sense. Personally, I hope it is true, because otherwise Christianity makes a monsterous claim: everyone who ever lived and didn’t hear about Jesus is going to hellllllll. But God is a loving God! That makes no sense to me, at the most basic level. I would really be reluctant to believe a religion in which for the majority of history humans are created with no chance. It also doesn’t make any sense how David, Noah, Jacob or even Abraham could be saved without knowing about Jesus. If Paul’s words are correct, and there is “no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” then I would have to conclude that these great Israelites were completely deluded.
As a side point, “there is no one righteous, no not one” is taken out of context in a Psalm. And it contradicts Jewish tradition that says there were completely righteous and blameless people. Jesse, the father of David, never sinned. One can easily imagine that 1 month old babies which have died have never sinned. One wonders what happens to babies that are born between the time of The Rapture and The End Of Days. Jesus just says you better hope you don’t have a little baby at this time. I wonder what happens to this little baby according to Paul.
You see, faced with all of this, to me it’s just easier to say: look guys, Paul was wrong. He had an epileptic fit, was struck by lightning, or something. He couldn’t see for a few days, I could really believe that. But this guy had never seen Jesus while he was alive. He just changed his life like Martin Luther did, and went to his death believing it. He taught others all about this. At the very least, you gotta admit that before 70 AD, most of what we have was from Paul.
As I said before: the Gospel of Thomas, rejected by the church, depicted Peter and Matthew as being unable to understand the true significance or identity of Jesus, and attributes leadership of the community to James the Just rather than Peter. It seems to agree with Paul and the traditions predating 70 AD. So this gospel might have been from the same time period. Scholars certainly think so, as it represents infighting between the disciples, similar to how Paul does, and so must have been written before they were all honored as the first generation.
But anyway, what I am more interested in hearing is how Catholics believe Non-Christians can be saved. That seems to me to be much more palatable than the evangelical position.
Very few if any scholars date the Gospel of Thomas early.
Is there one question you’d like to focus on?
As a point of reference, try John 21:25 (And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.) The oral (and eventually written, but not in Scriptural form) Tradition (capital “T” as opposed to little “t”) is vitally important as forming part of the “Deposit of Faith.”
Regarding non-Christians being saved: I suggest sound-bites won’t work here. Christ indeed is the Way, the Truth, and the Life–there is no other way to God… but that doesn’t preclude many paths to Christ. No, I’m not by any means reducing this to the nonsensical syncretic position that all religious faiths are equal. But I do know that a certain high-school chemistry teacher (a Protestant) was instrumental in directing me (a Catholic) along the path that led to Christ. That chemistry teacher participated in the Divine Plan, and that Plan will not permit itself to be limited to mere human considerations of who counts as saved and non-saved. Only God knows what is in the hearts of men…
Tom: fair enough. My response to the flood is like this:
1) I believe the flood to be a fictional story. I will allow some miracles:
( see http://www.talkreason.org/articles/list.cfm)
a) Genesis 7:19-20 tells us that during the Great Flood, “the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward the waters prevailed, and the mountains were covered.” The water level was higher than all the mountains. The highest mountain, Mt. Everest, is 29,028 feet high. Since the Earth’s surface is about 201,000,000 square miles, the total amount of water that would have rained down during the Flood is about 10,000,000,000,000,000 (ten million billion) cubic feet – much more than exists in all the Earth’s atmosphere.
b) From Genesis 6:15-16 we know the Ark had to be a rectangular box in its lower part, and a truncated pyramid in its upper part (with the lower base 300×50 cubits and the upper base 1×1 cubits). The length of the Ark had to be 10 times larger and its width more than 1.5 times larger than its height. Though the exact height of each part is not provided, it is clear that such a construction, were it really put on the water, would be subjected to extremely intense pitching and rolling, as well as steep swinging, rotating, and jolts, making it practically impossible for people and animals to stay aboard for any prolonged period of time.
But I have a problem with the following kinds of miracles:
1) Remnants of societies with pyramids etc. that didn’t really exist
2) Evidence of languages all over the world, trade routes, etc. that didn’t really exist
3) Absolute lack of evidence from the genetic record of animals which have evolved finely tuned ecosystems — e.g. the rainforest — that the ecosystems and evolution all started in the last 4 thousand years. In fact, with only 2 representatives of each species, predators would have nothing to eat for many generations.
The Flood vs. geology, history, and archeology.
The Flood is reported by the Torah to have taken place in the 600th year of Noah’s life, which can be easily calculated as the year 1656 from Creation – that is, about 2100 BCE. We have an almost uninterrupted account of ancient Egyptian history from about 3000 BCE until the Greek conquest in the 3rd century BCE, and there is no record of any flood more significant than local overflows of the Nile. Archeological research also reveals no traces of a major catastrophe circa 2100 BCE in which almost all the humans and animals upon the Earth died. And geologists, having explored the ground patterns for what corresponds to the appropriate period, found no traces of water spreading all over Earth. This leads to the conclusion that the account of the Great Flood in the Torah does not describe any real event.
I am pasting, true, but that list is quite a good reason to believe that Judaism is not true. And that the atheists are right.
Nevertheless, there is some good reason to believe Judaism is true. The kind of arguments I bring for Judaism seem to me to be much stronger than the ones for Christianity:
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=90
And even so, I doubt Judaism. Because there is strong evidence against it. Given my evidence to seriously doubt Christianity, I am looking for equally good reasons for it, as I have for Judaism, to at least balance out the scale a little bit. For even if Judaism is true, it says emphatically that the Law of God is forever, and to never follow other ways (such as those of the Gentiles). It does not help matters that Christians take verses from the OT clearly out of context (I can show many examples). I would like to have those verses stricken from being used in that way, so that we can have ONLY the verses that REALLY predict things. For example “Out of Egypt I called my son” is taken from the middle of a sentence, and if you see the entire sentence , it would be clear it is not a prophecy at all! It is clearly talking about the nation of Israel, as the first part of the sentence specifically says. This kind of cut-and-paste can be used to support any position, and many preachers with crazy ideas do that today.
I will read Case for Christ. But you asked what my current position is – that is what it is. Also I really wonder how Christianity deals with the problem of the unevangelized. Do many Christians really believe that for thousands of years, people were created sinful with zero chance of salvatioN?
Gregory,
Here is a simple, bulleted formulation of the historical argument for the Resurrection. First, the evidence — the following six pieces of evidence are accepted by the vast majority of NT scholars and historians:
1. Jesus died by Crucifixion and was buried
2. Unlike the disciples of other contemporary “Messiahs”, Jesus’s disciples did not disperse in fear after their leader’s death, but formed a strong community, suddenly changed centuries of Jewish religious practice (while still considering themselves Jews), and joyfully preached the Gospel across the known world. They did this because they claimed to have seen the risen Jesus in the flesh. They were willing to die for this belief.
3. James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, had a change of heart after claiming to have seen the risen Jesus. He later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and died a martyr.
4. Saul of Tarsus, an ardent (and violent) opponent of Christianity, dramatically converted to Christianity after claiming to have seen the risen Jesus. He became the most prolific apostle of Christ, and later was martyred.
5. Jesus’s tomb did not contain Jesus’s body (This fact is less well-accepted than the previous facts, but still enjoys support from a majority of NT scholars. The evidence for it is twofold: if the Jewish authorities wanted to stamp out the Christian sect, they could have easily pointed to Jesus’s decaying body, since the Resurrection was the cornerstone of the Christian message. The fact that the Jewish leaders did not do so, despite having a strong motive, suggests that they could not do so. Second, in the gospel of Matthew, there is evidence of an “argument” between the Jewish leaders and the Christian communities over what happened to the body of Jesus. The Jewish leaders claimed that the disciples had stolen Jesus’s body, thereby tacitly admitting that it was not in the tomb.).
6. There was absolutely no precedent in any ancient culture for the type of Resurrection that the early Christians claimed to have observed (N. T. Wright supports this point abundantly in his scholarly tome The Resurrection of the Son of God).
None of these pieces of evidence are, by themselves, sufficient to prove the Resurrection. For instance, take point 2: it does not prove that Jesus actually rose from the dead, but rather that Jesus’s disciples really believed that he did (i.e. that they were not deliberately lying). You have correctly observed that adherents of other religions often strongly and sincerely believe things (that we would deny), to the point of martyrdom. That’s why I say point 2 is insufficient to prove the Resurrection. However, I do believe there is a difference between, for instance, followers of Muhammad being willing to die for their belief that Muhammad is Allah’s prophet and followers of Jesus being willing to die for their belief that Jesus physically rose from the dead. The former is essentially an unfalsifiable belief that is not tied to an actual historical event, whereas the latter is an abundantly falsifiable belief predicated on a very definite historical event that the believers claimed to have witnessed. The former gives information about the charisma of Muhammad, whereas the latter gives information about the event of the Resurrection.
So where is the argument for the Resurrection, if not in any single point listed above? The next step from here is to formulate all possible hypotheses that might explain the events following Jesus’s death and the rise of the Christian church, and then to test each hypothesis against the six pieces of evidence. The hypotheses that I know of are (feel free to add others):
A. The Resurrection was a legend that developed in the early Christian community out of a desire to hold on to the memory of a beloved leader: This hypothesis accounts for evidence 1, but is falsified by 2-6.
B. The Resurrection was a hoax: Jesus’s disciples, wanting to carry on his legacy, stole his body from the tomb and told people he had been raised from the dead: accounts for 1 and 5, but not 2-4 and 6.
C. Jesus didn’t actually die on the Cross, but rather fainted, was assumed dead and placed in the tomb. Later, he woke up, rolled away the stone, and staggered back to his disciples, who thought he had risen from the dead: accounts for 5, attempts, but fails, to account for 1 (Roman soldiers couldn’t tell Jesus was dead? A near-dead guy rolled away the stone from the tomb?) and 2-4 (would a near-dead guy really have inspired the kind of faith in the Resurrection implied by 2-4?), fails to account for 6 (the disciples would have had no reason to jump to the conclusion of “Resurrection!” upon seeing a near-dead Jesus).
D. Jesus died and was buried, but his disciples hallucinated that he appeared alive to them, and mistook this vision for the Resurrection: accounts for 1 and 2 (sort of, although mass hallucinations have never actually been observed), but fails to account for 3-6.
E. Jesus had a twin brother that nobody knew about, who appeared to the disciples after Jesus died. The disciples thought he was Jesus, and proclaimed the Resurrection: accounts for 1, 2, and possibly 4, but fails to account for 3 (James, Jesus’s brother, would have recognized a twin), 5, and 6.
F. Jesus died and was buried in a tomb. After three days, he rose from the dead, exited the tomb, and appeared many times to his incredulous disciples before they understood what had happened and were convinced. Once they got it, however, they joyfully proclaimed the Good News of his Resurrection. He also appeared to his brother James and his enemy Saul, and convinced them, too: accounts for all evidence 1-6, but demands a significant re-evaluation of one’s worldview.
I hope you will accept what I have just written as a sketch of an argument for the Resurrection and, by implication, for Jesus’s identity as one who bears a unique relationship to God. Earlier you said:
Might I suggest that you tell them about the evidence for the Resurrection, and inform them that nobody in the 2000 years since the event has offered an explanation that accounts for all the facts, except for the early Christians themselves?
Sorry, guys. I posted my long comment before seeing Tom’s call to limit the discussion to a single topic. Do with it what you will.
As far as I understand it, orthodox (small o) Christianity holds that Christ’s Atonement and Justification is retroactive: that is, it applies to all people (past as well as present) who have recognized their sinfulness and trusted God — rather than their own status, good works, etc. — to save them from it. There is also the principle that God judges people in accordance with the light they have seen. People who lived before Jesus (or who have still never heard of him) did not (do not) know that Jesus is the Savior, so while God still expected (expects) them to trust in Him, He presumably did not (does not) expect them to know the name of His Son. C.S. Lewis even went so far as to say that God would have mercy on anyone who honestly evaluated the claims of Christ and decided that they were not compelling, as long as that person did not reject Christ out of pride or self-sufficiency. Maybe I’m taking Lewis out of context or remembering him wrong (I can’t find the quote right now), and I’m not sure that I would totally agree with him, but I do think God’s judgment takes into account the heart of each person, and is thus more nuanced — and just — than we can capture in general formulas like “everyone who confesses Jesus goes to heaven, while everyone else goes to hell”.
Arg! I did it again (strayed from topic)!
What strikes me about your recent answer, Greg, is that you gave it as if I hadn’t written a thing here.
Should I respond to you or not? If I do, will you read it?
Note that I am sending this via mobile phone from a boarding gate in Atlanta. It’s hard to read what has gone before by this method. If you responded more directly earlier, though, this still seems to take little to nothing into account of what I wrote on this.
Tom, why do you say that? I have taken into account what you said. You asked me what my position is currently, so I just described it. (In another post, I do inquire about the fate of the unevangelized, as this is especially troublesome for me to understand if I believe Christianity to be true).
You said that the genealogies of Noah might have left out people. I understand there have been some suggestions of this, but if you read the chapters yourself, can you see any break in the chain? As I said, “A was B years old when he begat C. After that, A lived D years and begat other sons and daughters” can not be true unless it is literally true. And this would then easily support a chronology by simple addition.
So therefore, the flood story, if it was true, HAD to have taken place around 2104 BC. I do not see an alternative explanation that makes sense, but if there is one, please point out why the genealogies should not be taken literally. If the flood happened locally, then Noah wouldn’t have had to build an ark for 40 years and save ALL the animals on earth. But in any case, the claim is that all languages evolved after 2104 and in particular, egyptians came from Noah, which is definitely contradictory to Egyptian history. The flood is also contradicted by well established and normal findings in geology, biology, and so forth.
If the flood is not true, then the book of Genesis contains fictional chapters. Moreover, it contains a lineage from fictional characters to real people. This would be troubling if we are to assume that Genesis was given by God. However, I have pointed out that it seems more plausible to me that Genesis was written by people somewhere in the period between 700 and 300 BC. If we consider the styles of the books, Deuteronomy is closer to the book of Joshua and the “Deuteronomic history books” e.g. Kings than it is to Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch.
This kind of reasoning makes one believe atheism is right. That is why I told you this.
You also mentioned that the flood is not central to your Christian faith, although later you said that Genesis IS important enough that invalidating Genesis would invalidate Christianity. There are various schools of thought — ranging from minimalist to biblical inerrancy. I am sure there can be some schools of thought that hold the Pentateuch to be full of nice fictional stories, and nevertheless Christianity to be true. I think many regular Catholics have told me that this is their position. For me, it is highly problematic because Jesus was a Jew. Everything in Christianity rests on Jewish prophecies.
So when a poster here says:
Greg: “He did not gather the Jewish people in their land as prophecied, nor did he save them from their enemies, nor did he usher in an era of world peace lasting until the end days
Crude: No, he didn’t. But to Christians, that’s in part because the jews had wrong expectations about what the messiah should be.”
I find that to be extremely hard to swallow. The very reason that you would expect a messiah is because of the prophecies of these prophets. The students of Jesus quote these prophets, as does Paul. And then you say that the Prophets had wrong expectations about the messiah! It is like cutting off the branch that you are yourself sitting on, and expecting not to fall.
My whole point in that second part was: even if Judaism is true, then Judaism itself says what Messiah should do, and Jesus did not do that. How can Christianity be true and the prophecies of Messiah be false?
Gregory,
If someone hasn’t mentioned it already, listen to Gary Habermas talk about his minimal facts approach as it concerns the resurrection event. There’s a 6-part audio from Dr. Habermas on YouTube. Search YouTube “The Resurrection of Jesus Gary Habermas”
From Dr. Habermas’ website:
Dr. Gary Habermas is able to argue persuasively for the real, historical death and bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth using only those facts that 95% of critics concede. In other words, using the facts about Jesus that virtually all scholars agree upon, Dr. Habermas is able to establish the historical reality of the resurrection.
Crude did not say (nor have Christians in general said) that “the Prophets had wrong expectations about the Messiah”. We have historically made the distinction between what the Prophets said (whose words were inspired by the Holy Spirit and did contain correct Messianic expectations) and the way the hearers interpreted those words (in a fallible, human way). The Prophets didn’t get it wrong; their audiences got it wrong, and consequently most of the Jewish people in the 1st century had wrong expectations about what the Messiah would accomplish. It’s hard to blame them — Christians wouldn’t have done any better under the same circumstances. But now we can read the Prophets in light of the words and actions of Christ, with the benefit of hindsight, and appreciate what the Prophets really meant. That’s not “cutting off the branch you are yourself sitting on”; that’s correcting an historical distortion of a true message — more like repairing the branch we are sitting on.
Greg:
Rom. 8:33 says that “It is God who justifies.” In other words, it isn’t Catholicism or Evangelicalism, or any other ism or religion, by which people are saved, it is God. Furthermore, it is not necessarily what everyone will consider to be “palatable.”
Greg,
This kind of reasoning makes one believe atheism is right. That is why I told you this.
Actually, it doesn’t do that. If I offered evidence against, say… Mormonism, would that be evidence “that atheism is right”? No – it would be evidence that Mormonism is wrong. As Catholic as I am, I recognize that theism does not logically stand or fall on Christianity.
And this would then easily support a chronology by simple addition.
And yet, if it’s correct that the genealogies were incomplete, it would sink that claim. You would admit as much, yes?
As for my response re: the prophets, Bill R. has me correctly there.
I did not say Catholicism or Evangelicalism is what saves people. I was asking about what their beliefs were about what it takes to be saved.
I have heard some Christians say, “I wouldn’t want to live in a world where God didn’t create everything and we don’t have eternal life.” But I have the opposite problem: what kind of a worldview proclaims that the name of Jesus is the only path to salvation, and implies that most people were created sinful, without any hope of being saved by virtue of the time and place they were born? I have heard many Christians affirm when I asked them: will the unevangelized all go to hell? They usually say they don’t know, but probably yes. “For the wages of sin is death…” + “all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”. I guess that is what I mean by unpalatable.
I would really welcome any kind of Christian position that has a sound basis in Scripture, that maybe has people able to get saved even if they have never heard about Jesus. I do not understand how people can affirm the other monstrous-sounding position as “well that is just the way it works” but not be able to accept atheism as “well, that’s just the way it works.”
Gregory,
Instead of the audio I suggested, there’s an 11-part video of Gary Habermas talking about the minimal facts approach. Video quality isn’t very good though.
Greg:
You ask what are the beliefs upon which salvation is based. I offer the Catholic position:
Believers are saved (Rom 8:24, Eph 2:5-8) but are also being saved (I Cor 1:8, II Cor 2:15, Phil 2:15), and we have hope that we will be saved (Rom 5:9-10, I Cor 3:12-15). Believers are redeemed, and like Paul we work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), with hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom 5:2, II Tim 2:11-13)… but not with a false “absolute” assurance about our own ability to persevere (II Cor 13:5). We are saved by grace alone through faith working in love.
“… Are we saved by faith or by baptism? Are we saved by believing or by the Spirit? these are false dichotomies that should have no place in our thinking. Can we cut any ONE of these out of the list and proclaim it ALONE as the means of salvation? Can we be saved without faith? without God’s grace? without repentance? without baptism? without the Spirit? these are ALL involved and necessary; not ONE of them can be dismissed as a means of obtaining eternal life. Neither can ONE be emphasized to the exclusion of ANOTHER. They are all involved in salvation and entry into the Church. The Catholic Church does not divide these various elements of salvation up, overemphasizing some while ignoring others; rather, she holds them all in their fullness.” (Stephen Ray)
The following is a list of things Jesus said were necessary to gain eternal life (i.e., “go to heaven,” “be saved,” etc.) The list is not exhaustive. Note also you can find negative ways to say these things, as many times Paul says no fornicators or idolaters will enter the kingdom of heaven, etc.
** Keeping the commandments (Matt. 19:16-30)
** Beholding the Son and believing in him (John 6:40)
** Being drawn by Christ to the Father (John 6:44)
** Eating Christ’s flesh, drinking His blood (John 6:53-54)
** Hating one’s own life in the world (John 12:25)
** Knowing the Father and Jesus Christ (John 17:2-3)
** Being converted and becoming like children (Matt. 18:3)
** Turning away from sin (Matt. 18:8-9)
** Doing what is good (“good deeds”) (John 5:28-29)
** Being poor in spirit (Luke 6:20)
** Being steadfast, not looking back (Luke 9:62)
** Giving a cup of cold water, i.e., render works of charity (Matt. 10:42)
** Denying ourselves, taking up our cross, following Christ, losing our lives for Christ’s sake (Matt. 16:24-28)
** Being “righteous,” here defined as having performed works of charity and mercy towards others (Matt. 25:31-46)
** Performing works of mercy toward those in need, without expecting a reward (Luke 14:12-14)
** Leaving everything for God’s sake (Luke 18:29)
** Being born again of water and the Spirit, i.e., baptism (John 3:3-5)
** Enduring to the end (Matt. 10:22)
** Entering by Jesus (John 10:9)
** By “your words” (Matt. 12:36-37)
** Being humble & acknowledging one’s sinfulness (Luke 18:14)
** By believing AND being baptized (Mark 16:15-16)
** By believing in Christ (John. 3:16; Acts 16:31)
** By repentance (Acts 3:28; 2 Peter 3:9)
** By baptism (John 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21; Titus 3:5)
** By the work of the Spirit (John 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:6)
** By declaring with our mouths (Luke 12:8; Romans 10:9)
** Coming to a knowledge of truth (1 Tim. 2:4; Hebrews 10:26)
** By works (Romans 2:6,7; James 2:24)
** By grace (Acts 15:11; Eph. 2:8)
** By his blood (Romans 5:9; Heb. 9:22)
** By his righteousness (Romans 5:17, 2 Peter 1:1)
** By his Cross (Eph. 2:16; Col. 2:14)
The point I was trying to make is that your, mine or any other human being, deciding what is fair or just, has anything to do with how anyone is saved. In Romans Paul argues against this kind of self justification.
Indeed, in Rom. 5 Paul argues that we are powerless.
In other words, we are powerless to do anything to save ourselves, forgiveness and salvation comes from God through Jesus Christ.
Imagine that you are stranded in the middle of the ocean after your boat has sunk. You are powerless to do anything at all to save yourself. Your salvation depends on someone coming by in either in another boat, ship or helicopter seeing your plight and offering to save you. That is kind of the picture that Paul is trying to present to us here. But actually there is more than that. Imagine it is a stormy sea and the rescuer has to, not only risk his life, but actually has to sacrifice his life to save you. That’s the picture.
JAD:
Actually, that’s not completely correct. You MUST do something to “save yourself,” and you are NOT powerless: you must “participate” in the salvic act whose source is Christ; you must have a “fiat” moment; you must accept the outstretched saving hand. You are part of the process that saves you. Without your acceptance and participation, you cannot be saved–even by God because he will not rape your capacity for free will.
Grace never destroys–it perfectizes: your human acceptance is a real act that is part of the salvation process. No, you did not die on the Cross, but you can either be the thief on the right or on the left: it’s your choice.
That’s the picture.
Holopupenko, your view (correct me if I’m wrong) seems to be somewhat semi-Pelagian.
http://carm.org/semi-pelagianism
While I don’t completely deny free will, (I would describe myself as semi-Augustinian) I think Paul’ argument in Roman’s (3:10-12) is that sin renders a person helpless.
The only thing we can do as far as our own salvation is to make the free will choice to accept the gift of His grace. (Eph. 2:8-9)
Okay one thing that bugs me is these “partial quotes” taken out of context by the gospel writers. I wish to set things straight at least in this regard.
Here is the original verse. It is found in the book of Psalms:
http://niv.scripturetext.com/psalms/14.htm
The same psalm continues:
“Will evildoers never learn—
those who devour my people as men eat bread
and who do not call on the LORD?
There they are, overwhelmed with dread,
for God is present in the company of the righteous.
You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is their refuge.”
Notice, that God is present in the companies of the righteous.
The psalm talks about the morally deficient people – the fools. But it affirms that there are righteous people!
“David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”
“Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.” – Luke, historian who wrote the gospel of Luke
There are many more examples. Jews believe that little babies are sinless. Christians believe that even little babies are somehow under “original sin”, even though it is not clear how a little baby that is 1 week old can sin, or that all do.
Just pointing out that the verse supporting the doctrine of original sin is taken out of context by Paul.
Greg, you wrote,
Yesterday was a long travel day for me, and as I indicated when I wrote what I did, I wasn’t able easily to review what you had said earlier in this discussion. That’s part of it. There is more, though.
Here is how it seems to me. You began this discussion with both questions and a perspective. It’s what we all do, so I’m not concerned about that. But when I answered your questions from my perspective, I had hoped you would interact with my answers rather than brushing them off. Your answer here shows almost no recognition of the possibility I had raised of a local flood; not even in the section you labeled “The Flood vs. geology, history, and archeology.”
You are quite committed to a literalist interpretation of the Genesis genealogies. It’s ironic that the unbeliever here is the literalist. You’re reading an ancient text through modern filters, though, and your position is by no means universally held. For more, see here. Even some of the early church fathers held that the genealogies were telescoped, and this was not because they were trying to accommodate geology or archaeology.
Because there is therefore no need to commit to a relatively recent date for Noah—the Flood could have been (and I think was) tens of thousands of years ago—the Egyptian history etc. you refer to has no bearing on it.
You say,
Let me walk you through reasons why that conclusion is premature at best. It’s a recap of what I’ve already said, with further analysis based on what you’re saying.
First, there are admittedly questions about the Flood, but there is at least one credible possibility that respects both the biblical and geological data: a local Flood, some tens of thousands of years ago. I’m saying it is a possibility. The contrary position, of course, would be that it is an impossibility. That’s the position you seem to be taking. For you to hold that position now, though, you would have to hold also that your interpretation of the genealogies is the only possible interpretation. You have shown that it is one possible interpretation, but I have shown it is not the only one, and I think you probably recognize that by now.
So there is at least one possible interpretation of the Flood account that respects Bible, science, and history. Thus there is no need to discard Genesis on that account.
You wrote,
I don’t understand how you got that. Here was our most recent exchange on that. The first and last lines are mine:
If Genesis is not true, then Christianity is false. If the genealogies are telescoped and the Flood was local, though, then Genesis is true in the sense that its original readers in the original context would have understood it truly, and also in the sense that we can come to a true understanding of it by studying the context of the time in which it was written. (Of course there are other Christians who hold that Genesis is true in the sense that the genealogies are telescoped—the Flood was more than just a few thousand years ago—and the Flood was global. I don’t agree, but I recognize that there is that group out there.)
We can talk more about prophecies, messianic expectations, the unevangelized, sin, and so on, but let’s come to some resolution on the Flood first, okay? Remember, this is a blog, not a book, and it can only do well what blogs do well. It is a conversation, after all, and conversations do well to stay on one topic. You can feel free to bring up the next subject when and if this one is resolved.
Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe takes the view that the flood was geographically local but universal in regards to the human race. They have several articles posted on their web site that defend this view and answer some of the FAQ’s about the interpretation of the relevant Biblical passages.
For example, how should we interpret the word earth that is used in the Genesis account of the flood?
Ross responds:
http://www.reasons.org/exploring-extent-flood-part-one
Jad:
Of course that’s correct: a fiat is a fiat. Of course God’s plan includes man’s active, unforced cooperation/participation–otherwise the Cross would be utterly useless. God will not force salvation upon anyone.
And, no, that’s not semi-Pelagian because you’re incorrectly equivocating a person’s fiat as being on the same level as God’s salvic act–they’re not.
I shudder at your statement “While I don’t completely deny free will…” We are fully in possession of our capacity for free will within the context of our created human natures. (By the way, the Reformation plain-meaning Scriptural hermeneutic rejects natures because neither are they seen nor do the Scriptures refer to them… which ultimately plays havoc with the subsequent theological development, and is–believe it or not–echoed in the error of Intelligent Design.)
We are not passive robots subject to the occassionalist error of God sticking His fingers into reality to manipulate things like some cosmic marionetter, we are not piles of dung to be covered by a thin veneer of snow. God’s Providence operates at a much, much deeper and yet closer level than that. We become new creatures in Christ… but NOT at the expense of our natures. I repeat: God’s grace does not damage or obliterate human nature, God’s grace perfectizes human nature. (Are you acquainted with the concept of theosis?)
That our natures are damaged by original sin–as with any sin–is clear: we become less human, but we don’t become un-human… although we are the only creatures that can by ourselves change our human natures because we can act inhumanely. You are suggesting a different error: one in which man’s free will can’t, in fact, operate at all because man’s reason is utterly corrupted. That’s a false notion from Luther, for it views people as passive, evil, little robots. Many atheists do objectively good things, while per your vision they can never do anything good. Those proximate goods must be ordered in atheists and in all of us to the ultimate good–the summum bonum.
I also reject your personal interpretations of Romans 3:10-12 and Ephesians 2:8-9… but this is neither the time nor place to get into that.
Let’s point our discussion here toward Greg’s current question, okay? That’s who I started the thread for. Thanks.
Tom: I agree, one step at a time. I have a habit of getting too excited about figuring things out together, and this is not the best format to do that.
I know it looks ironic that the “unbeliever” here is also the literalist, but that is actually typically the case. The reason is that believers have developed all sorts of views, either because of apologetics (trying to add to or change the original points of view in response to contradictions or problems with science/history/what has become known) or simply due to human nature / political reasons / what have you. Throughout history we have had a colossal number of Christian views: docetists, judaizers, gnostics, unitarians, trinitarians, minimalists, literalists, evangelicals, protestants, catholics, including a bunch of obscure cults as well as offshoots like the latter day saints. Even if I showed that Genesis could not possibly be true in any sense — literal or not — there will always be some group somewhere for whom this is not a problem at all.
You say that if Genesis is not true, then Christianity is false. I respect that. Although let me briefly tell you that I myself see a way that Genesis could be not true, and yet Christianity can be true:
I have spoken of it before. The Pentateuch talks about Moses in 3rd person, describes events after his death, notes that there was no greater prophet after him, and describes the finishing of “The Book of the Torah To The End” and subsequent events, such as the song that Moses taught the Israelites. It names kings which have not existed in Moses’ time, and seems to make mistakes about the geopolitical situation of the time — we have evidence that the Chaldean tribes did not reach Ur until hundreds of years after Abraham sojourned in “Ur of the Chaldeans”. The style of Deuteronomy is much closer to that of Joshua than the other 4 books, and is part of what scholars refer to as “Deuteronomic history”. That would explain why it records the same events that have already been recorded in the previous books.
It is not too hard to conclude, then, that the 5 books which have been ascribed to Moses through a later tradition were not in fact written by Moses. Atheists would say that they are simply ingenious collections of several legends of the Israelites, probably redacted while in Babylonian captivity. They talk ABOUT the events, but were certainly not authored by the characters in them. This would also explain why Ezra was so surprised upon coming back from Babylon that the Israelites had no idea about any of this, and had taken other wives. Just as in the tie of Josiah, Ezra educated the masses about “their” tradition. Ezra was coming from Babylon, where Cyrus had commission a rebuilding of the Holy Temple. He was a very respected man. I would like to see any rabbis actually trace their tradition to Moses through Israel and not Babylon!
So what I am trying to say is, ascribing Mosaic authorship to the Pentateuch has no basis in anything except circular reasoning, as far as I know.
Ironically enough, this position would save Christianity from being invalidated even if the entire book of Genesis were invalidated. For if we relegate Genesis to merely a human endeavor of trying to collect stories (two creation accounts, a flood, etc.) then the documentary hypothesis seems to be quite close to the truth. Meanwhile, it could be that some of these stories are true — especially the one where the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai and all heard God speak. Certainly, if there was a first temple, and it contained the Ark of the Covenant, then in that ark is the truth Book of the Law – the Torah. The Babylonians who raided the temple kept incredible records. Nebuhdanezzar had them make an exaustive list of everything they took. AMONG THEM THE ARK OF THE COVENANT WAS NOT FOUND. This indicates that it was hidden somewhere. So far as I know, no one has ever found it again. We find it, we find out the truth. And I strongly suspect the Book of the Torah is not at all these 5 books. From what we know, Hebrew in its block form did not even exist at the time this book was supposed to be written.
So although atheism (with respect to Judaism and Christianity) seems like the most valid conclusion here, there is a chance that some of these events happened as described, and God sent his only Son to the Jews, etc.
Although this chance is in my opinion extremely extremely small. Because Jesus, being the son of God, should know the truth. And yet he quotes from the Pentateuch all the time, and teaches from it. I am not sure if there is any place that Jesus actually says that Moses wrote it. But my point is, Jesus believed this Jewish tradition that the Pentateuch is the infallible word of God. And if it was written and finalized during the Babylonian captivity, then it is not exactly what people think it is.
Gregory,
Let’s review then where this leaves us. You asked about Genesis and the truth of Christianity, and I responded this way:
1. There are some confusions surrounding the correct interpretation of the Flood, but they are not unresolvable.
2. Therefore the interpretation of the Flood incident ought not to stand in the way of our view of the truth of Christianity.
You seem to agree with (1), though your resolution is quite different and in some ways opposed to mine. You raise the concern that if the Pentateuch were a later composition, Jesus should have known that it was, if he was who Christianity claims he was.
But I still do not have the slightest idea what you think of my view of the Flood, except that you consider it one of a number of Christian “views.” To which I respond, so what? The question is whether it’s a good explanation or not. You haven’t given us any reason to doubt that it is. I’m not fond of the genetic fallacy, and I trust you feel the same.
I think it would be helpful at this stage to outline this still more formally yet. I believe the following summarizes your question. You are wondering whether we ought not accept the following as valid and true:
A. If the Genesis account of the Flood is false, then Christianity is false.
B. The Genesis account of the Flood is false.
C. Therefore Christianity is false.
That argument is valid in form, so if (A) and (B) are true, then the conclusion is sound and Christianity is false. I will grant you (A) with this revision:
A’. If the Genesis account of the Flood is false in terms of what it is intended to affirm, then Christianity is false.
(I’m granting you more than I necessarily must there. What really follows, if the Genesis account is false, is that biblical inerrancy is false; and it is possible to be a Christian without holding to inerrancy. But I do believe that the Bible is entirely true in what it affirms, in context of the original’s writer and audience’s understanding, so I’ll grant you (A’) regardless.)
If we accept (A’), which I think you would agree is eminently reasonable, then we have to revise (B) in order for the argument to remain valid, resulting in:
A’. If the Genesis account of the Flood is false in terms of what it intended to affirm, then Christianity is false.
B’. The Genesis account of the Flood is false in terms of what it is intended to affirm.
C. Therefore Christianity is false.
I hope you see that this is the better way to understand the argument.
So then, does what we know about the Flood (and of this syllogism) disprove Christianity? The answer is yes only if (B’) is known to be true. If (B’) is possibly false, then (C) does not follow, and Christianity’s truth is at least an open question. The syllogism that follows from (B’) being possibly false (i.e., it is possible that the Flood account is not false) goes like this:
A’. If the Genesis account of the Flood is false in terms of what it is intended to affirm, then Christianity is false.
B”. The Genesis account of the Flood is possibly not false in terms of what it was intended to affirm.
C’. Therefore Christianity is possibly not false.
Conclusion (C’) could also be stated as “possibly true,” which is logically equivalent.
I won’t pretend that “possibly not false” or “possibly true” is very informative. But note that you haven’t begun to establish that (B’) is certain to be true; in fact, I have shown that there is at least one credible, biblically and geologically respectable explanation of the Flood, which makes (B’) at least possibly false. If that’s the case, and I think clearly it is, then (C) does not follow. We can only reach the minimally informative conclusion (C’).
So if the larger question is whether or not Christianity is true, then I think we’ve gone as far as we need to with the question of the Flood. If there is a possibly true interpretation of Genesis which is consistent with the overall truth of Christianity, that’s all we need to know from Genesis. Taken by itself, this does not tell us whether Christianity is true, but it does tell us that what we know about the Flood neither proves nor disproves Christianity.
That being the case, we ought to move on to another topic.
One of those other topics could be something in support of this that you wrote, Gregory:
I was thinking in terms of some references or other evidence you might provide to back up that claim. I’m not aware of any core truth in Christianity that has been disproven any which way at all.
But the next topic, when you’re ready for it, is up to you; or if you prefer I could start a new thread with another excerpt from the message you originally sent.
Tom – sorry, I was working on some things the past two days and didn’t have a chance to respond.
I was looking up “May 21, doomsday” today (which started with Harold Camping and FamilyRadio) and I came across a couple more verses of NT writers taking the flood seriously:
Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
2 Peter 3:6-8 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But , beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So I agree with you — it seems to me rather strong that if we disprove the flood (“in terms of what it was intended to affirm”) then Christianity is false. I think there is still a scenario in which Christianity can be true — namely if the gospel writers were mistaken while Jesus spoke of the flood only as a fictional story to illustrate a point — but I think that is taking the picking and choosing too far.
So let’s see, how could the flood be real? I think you will agree that the Genesis account does not describe a local flood, but a global one. This is because A) Noah built an ark for 40 years instead of just leaving the area, and B) Noah saved two of every living animal, and C) “Every living thing on the earth” was destroyed in the flood.
I think we can also agree that there is an uninterrupted Egyptian history dating to at least 2500 BC. The pyramids of Cheops and Djoser were built around 2500 and 2300 BC. And to build pyramids, a civilization with many people would be required, which would include a distinctive language, an economy, and so forth. This means that the date of the flood must be pushed back to at least 3,000 BC, so as to allow time for the Tower of Babel incident to occur, and the Egyptian language to develop.
Now, let’s consider why I think the flood happened in 2104 BC, as does every orthodox Jewish tradition these days. Mainly it is only due to two things:
A) Genesis 11, whose main purpose seems to be to keep a record of the generations since Noah, and the passage of time. (Can you think of another purpose?)
B) The Jewish tradition that we are living in the year 5771 from the creation of the world, which is universal today in many aspects of orthodox Judaism.
Okay, first of all I should remark that B is probably based on A. But A is found in modern Biblical texts! You should know that there were other Jewish books that had slightly divergent accounts, such as the book of Jubilees, which goes into further detail about Noah’s wives and many other things. Read this:
http://nazarenespace.com/group/thebookofjubilees/forum/topics/does-jubilees-conradict
Jews had several books which did not make it into the Canon for some reason. They included:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilees
http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/home.html
I should note that, while we seem to have the text of the Book of Jubilees (thanks to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church), we probably do not have the text of the book of Jasher. The link I gave above may be a mere fabrication.
Anyway, so what do we have so far? We have that the book of Genesis may not be authoritative after all. Details found in it contradict details in the book of Jubilees. And the dates are going to be different. But I suspect that this is not going to do it for you, or for most Christians. For whatever reason, the Biblical canon as accepted by the Catholic Church in 300 AD is considered authoritative, and not the one that has been widely suppressed and was only found in Ethiopia as well as among the dead sea scrolls. So fine, let’s assume that Genesis is right and the Book of Jubilees is wrong.
In this case, can you tell me how the flood could have been any earlier than 2104 while not making some part of Genesis 11 factually wrong?
I will paste it here:
We KNOW when Abram lived by the same method: following the genealogy years, as well as other definite indications of this kind. Can you point to the verse in Genesis 11 that you consider skips generations? At least one. They seem to form an unbroken chain from Shem, Noah’s son, to Abram. Furthermore, it says that two years after the flood, Shem was 100 years old. So we get an unbroken line that dates the flood. I think this is an inescapable conclusion from Genesis 11.
Harold Camping believes the flood happened in 4990 BC, and he is absolutely convinced of that for some reason.
Can you see any justification for thinking this or any date that is not around 2104 BC for the flood? I’m sorry but even though I know “some people out there” think the flood could have been on another day, if you consider Genesis to be 100% authoritative and trustworthy, then I do not see HOW, POSSIBLY, any generations were skipped in the genealogy that is right there in front of you, and whose main purpose was to record the generations after Noah faithfully. The only reason those people “think that” is because they are trying to get around the obvious problems that have appeared.
The claim that Genesis makes is simple: the flood happened in the year 1656, which is 2104 for us.
Unwinding this little discussion I think you see the conclusion. Where did I go wrong?
Lastly I want to leave you with this link. Check it out!
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
Good morning, Gregory,
There are two questions on the table. One is whether the biblical account of the Flood ought to be taken as literal in the sense that it meant a global flood in 2104 B.C. The other one is whether the Flood disproves Christianity.
My answer to the first one is “I certainly don’t think so.” I’ll get to some of your further questions on that in a moment.
Note that in my last comment to you I demonstrated that Christianity is possibly true of the Flood account is possibly true, and that this means possibly true in terms of what it was intended to affirm. If the account is possibly true as an account of a local flood, then it meets the standard and Christianity’s truth is not undermined in the least.
Your quotations from Hebrews and 2 Peter are consistent with a flood that is universal with respect to the human race but not global with respect to the sphere of the earth. Everything else we have discussed here so far is also consistent with that. Your objections to a global flood (with respect to the earth) have no relevance to that understanding of the Flood.
Bear in mind that in order to answer the second question (concerning the Flood and the truth of Christianity) all I need to do is to show that there is an account of the Flood that is possibly true. I have done that now, I believe, with my arguments and the pages several of us have linked to.
I had thought there was one there that had to do with the genealogies, but I’m having trouble tracking it down this morning, so I’ll give start from scratch on that one. Dr. John Milliam writes,
Please go to the linked page and read his points 1 through 7 following that paragraph. (I don’t want to paste that much of someone else’s material in here.) His argument is directed toward a Young Earth Creationist, and hence it relies on the assumption of biblical inerrancy. You need not follow that assumption here though; all you need do is see that there is clear documentary evidence that terms like “begat” need not mean exactly what they seem (to us) to mean.
Now, if this is possibly true, then the important question has been answered: Christianity’s truth is consistent with the truth of the biblical flood. And that’s the question that is most of interest to me.
Harold Camping has no credibility to either of us, by the way.
I’m confused, in fact, as to why you would direct us to a source neither of us agrees with (Orthodox Judaism) to settle a point in dispute. Also, it surprises me that even though neither of us believes in biblical literalism in a certain sense (I don’t believe that every word must be interpreted in its plain sense as it appears to 21st century readers, and you don’t believe the Bible at all), you still insist that the point must be settled in that specific literal sense. What’s the point of insisting we agree with each other together in terms that neither of us agrees with individually? It seems more like caviling than debating.
The flood story does not make sense on so many levels. Where to begin?
If the flood was global and covered Mt. Ararat (16,854 ft), that would have required doubling the total amount of water on Earth. Where did the water come from? Where did it go?
If the flood was local and covered Mt. Ararat, how come the water did not spill over into the surrounding regions, e.g. Europe? It had several months to do so.
If we assume that the flood was nonetheless local, what was the point of rescuing every sort of animal if they were safe elsewhere?
I can go on and on.
See also here. Questions answered.
From Tom’s link:
That makes no sense, either. If the flood only covered some local hills, people living higher up in the mountains would survive and so would animals.
That assumes people were living higher up in the mountains—not at all a necessary assumption this early in the history of the race.
Animals that live higher in the mountains would have survived. Species that didn’t live that high would not have survived.
From the article by Deem:
How is that an unreasonable explanation?
Tom wrote:
How early are we talking about? 6,000 years ago? 10,000? 50,000? Man lived outside of Mesopotamia during all these times.
Then Noah could have just taken domestic animals with him. And birds? Why would he need to take birds?
olegt,
Did you notice the section “Why were birds on the ark?” in the link Tom posted?
-Neil
Tom Gilson:
Geological evidence for a true global flood is lacking.
Hey Tom,
Just came across your blog and this site, 5/20. Will return often now that I know where it is. May I humbly suggest in regards to your comment above and the unresolved nature you mention, that you check out ‘Earth’s Catastrophic Past’, Vols. 1 & 2, by Andrew A. Snelling, Institute for Creation Research, 2009?
Blessings my friend.
“What’s the point of insisting we agree with each other together in terms that neither of us agrees with individually? It seems more like caviling than debating.”
I think the question is bigger than that. I think the question is whether Gregory is here to ask questions, respond to the answers given and conduct an honest dialog or continue to simply expound his own viewpoints. Your post #87 counldn’t have been more thorough yet Gregory ignores your conclusions in his very next response.
He has made outlandish and inaccurate statements about the Bible (“I think the claims which most adherents believe as “gospel truth” have been disproven every which way by 20 independent scientific and historical endeavors.”) which he has failed to back up despite your requst he do so. 99 posts in and where has Gregory engaged in what anyone could describe as a true discussion.
By the way, I think that we ought to be careful about how we argue about biblical inerrancy. I myself am a biblical inerrantist but I think it’s important to remember why we believe biblical inerrancy to be true. I think people tend to accept biblical inerrancy on inferential or presuppositional grounds, not on deductive grounds. The inferential argument says:
1. Based on the historical evidence, it is reasonable to accept the gospels as a generally reliable portrait of the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
2. If the historical Jesus said the things recorded in the gospels, then he was either God or an evil megalomaniac.
3. If Jesus is God, then He is completely trustworthy
4. Jesus believed the Bible was inerrant
5. Therefore, the Bible is inerrant
This is an inferential argument for the inerrancy of the Bible. Obviously, the key step is 3, and wrestling with the divinity of Jesus is (in my opinion) far more important than our views on inerrancy. A presuppositional argument takes the form:
1. I assume the Bible is God’s Word
2. The Bible says God is unable to lie
3. Therefore, the Bible is inerrant
I think both of these argument are reasonable grounds for believing inerrancy. On the other hand, a deductive argument seems very silly:
1. I have perfect understanding of ancient history
2. I have perfect understanding of ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek and Aramaic
3. I have perfect hermeutical principles
4. Therefore I deduce that the Bible is inerrant
I just think all this is helpful to keep in mind when we come to questions about the Bible. Since inerrancy is normally known inferentially, it makes sense to start with what we think about Jesus. Starting with some other biblical issue itself is a bit roudabout.
-Neil
Neil Shenvi wrote:
I did, I did. The proposed solution does not make sense. A particular bird may be restricted to a local area, but the species of that bird is not. Once the rain stopped and the flood receded, birds of various species would repopulate the area.
And what’s with the archaeopteryx? It had been dead for millions of years.
Hi Neil,
Good argument. However, from the presuppositional approach, couldn’t we add a step before your step 1 above, to wit: God is.
olegt,
I’m not understanding your objection. It applies equally well to everything on the ark, even land animals. Why aren’t you raising this same objection with regard to everything, rather than to only birds?
The same is true of your archaeopteryx objection. Why aren’t you raising this
objection with regard to all extinct species?
-Neil
Steve Drake,
Nice to see you here, coming over from the First Things blog. Thanks for the note and the book recommendation. I appreciate the spirit in which you offered it.
The good news is, for purposes of our discussion with Gregory it’s only required that we show that the Flood account is possibly true, on some credible interpretation. That’s because I’m not trying to prove any particular point about the Flood. Instead I’m trying to prove that there is nothing in the Flood account that proves Christianity is false, and I’m hoping that will give us the freedom to go on from there to talking about reasons to think Christianity is true. I think that’s the important question in this particular discussion.
For that purpose it needs to be credible on his terms, in order for him to be satisfied we’ve met that minimum requirement. I’m willing to disagree with his terms to a certain extent—that we’re required to accept his Orthodox Jewish sources, for example—but it would be asking a lot to expect him to agree that a global flood could credibly have happened. So I’m working within the framework of a local flood for that reason.
Now, I do actually believe the local flood interpretation is more likely than the global one; but as you noticed, I’m not totally resolved in my mind about it. If I were wrong and the global flood were shown to be the better explanation, then so much the better. But it would need to be both biblically and geologically credible for me to accept it as a good explanation.
Steve,
Yes, but presuppositionalist approaches tend to start with presupposing the inspiration of the Bible rather than with the presuppositon that “God is” because the presupposition that “God is” does not entail a belief that God reveals himself to man or that one particular revelation is true. I do think that the assumption that God exists is properly basic. It just doesn’t form a basis for biblical inerrancy.
-Neil
BillT’s 9:23 am comment is worth highlighting.
Gregory, if you’re interested in an honest dialogue, it’s not too late to show that you are. If not, just let us know. Be aware that if your next comments here don’t begin actually to display that kind of honest dialogue, then you would be letting us know that very thing. If that happens I’ll know that our conversation is finished, because I doubt anyone here is interested in continuing in a pretense of dialogue.
But as I said, it’s not too late yet…
Tom,
Thanks for your kind words and explanation. I’m not too keen quite yet to jump into this discussion since ya’ll been at it for awhile, and as you explain in regards to Gregory, you’re working on a different track.
Tom Gilson:
But it would need to be both biblically and geologically credible for me to accept it as a good explanation.
I think a global flood is both biblically and geologically credible and defensible. I’m sure you must have realized this from my posts at First Things and in my defense of same, but I’ll wait for another thread, perhaps, to ‘persuade’ my argument. Snelling’s book would be worth checking out if you have the time and desire. Blessings.
Neil Shenvi:
because the presupposition that “God is” does not entail a belief that God reveals himself to man or that one particular revelation is true.
Hi Neil,
I’m not sure I agree with that. The presuppositional approach does indeed start that man is without excuse for knowledge of God (Rom. 1:20). You’re familiar with Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Francis Schaeffer, I presume?
Steve,
Only through Frame’s “Apologetics to the Glory of God”. But doesn’t he lay out there the argument I outlined above? I agree that man is “without excuse” but that is a separate issue from whether the conclusion “the Bible is inerrant” follows from the premise “God is”. Right?
-Neil
Neil,
Yes, I guess we are not talking about the necessary steps between ‘God is’, and ‘the Bible is inerrant’. I take it that you would agree from a presuppositional approach that there are other steps involved? What might those other steps be?
Steve,
If we assume that the premise “God is” refers to the biblical God, then this might be a reasonable step 0. However, I think that the assertion “God exists” by itself does not necessarily assume the biblical God, at least when asserted by most people. In fact, “God is” could equally be the beginning of a presuppositional argument for the inerrancy of the Jewish or Muslim Scripture. So the real premise which “does the work” is the assumption that “the Bible is God’s Word”. That’s why I started with it, rather than the premise “God is” which is more ambiguous. Am I understanding you correctly?
Also, we might want to move this discussion elsewhere since I don’t want to hijack this conversation and we’re pretty far removed from the original topic.
-Neil
Hi Neil,
Yes, I didn’t want to sidetrack your original discussions, so I’ll beg off for now, and let you guys get back on track with the original discussion. Thanks for your comments. Look forward to interacting with you all.
-Steve
BillT: Come on, those comments are not fair. There are 94 comments here in large part because people started discussing Ehrman and other things.
Tom: I *am* interested in an honest dialogue.
I wrote several comments which touched on difficulties in Christianity analogous to the ones I have with the flood. I did this because I appreciate that invalidating the truth of the flood story (in any reasonable scenario), or entire chapters of Genesis, does not invalidate Christianity for many Christians, such as Catholics that I spoke to. You did say I had presented my case more thoughtfully than any skeptic that you have encountered.
But then you rightfully turned our attention back to the Flood, the subject of this particular post. Not Erhman, or even the truth of the gospels. But the truth of the flood in particular.
I have been responding to what you said in all the subsequent comments I have been writing. I am trying to make several cohesive points:
1) Let’s be aware that even though YOU and I think that demonstrating that entire chapters in Genesis describe fictional events will be enough to invalidate Christianity, we should be aware that there are still ways around it — ways that you and many Christians would not accept. They all involve the idea that Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch was written at a much later time, as most secular scholars believe, and certainly not by Moses. The book of Jubilees in particular has a contradictory chronology, and there are other lost books, such as the book of Jasher. There is evidence that Deuteronomy was not written by Moses. And so forth. I think I have said everything we need to say about this line of reasoning, because it leads mainly to Atheism, and is not conducive to rescuing the validity of Christianity if Genesis was disproved.
2) Therefore, we are concerned only with whether Genesis was indeed given by God, or whether it contains fictional stories. (I rule out the possibility that God would give a book to the Israelites that contains lineages from fictional characters to real characters.)
3) You admit there are problems with a global flood that happened around 2104 BC. There are many problems with global floods happening at ANY time, and this link does a good job of pointing out a lot of them:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
4) Thus you consider this at the very least a problem. How do you plan to resolve it? You have raised two additional possibilities:
A) The genealogies are “telescoped”. What does this mean exactly, and how does it take away our ability to figure out the year of the flood by simple addition?
From what I understand, the “telescoping” is mainly a way to reconcile Luke (a greek historian/physician who was not even Jewish) and his genealogical list that inserts an extra father between Shelah and Arphaxad, despite the fact that Genesis said Arphaxad had Shelah at the respectable age of 35. Here is in my opinion the best attempt to explain it: http://www.bibleinsight.com/crn1xs.html . Notice their conclusion:
Normally, a historian would think that this was a simple error on Luke’s park. But the author’s belief in the infallibility of Luke leads him to believe that Luke meant to convey something very deep to us about Genesis, that the Jews themselves did not have in their writings. I have a problem with this kind of bias, but this is going off on a tangent.
What I want to say is this: please define telescoped in the context you are using it, and — telescoped or not, the numbers are in black and white … 35 years … 30 years… you can add them all up and get the year of the flood exactly. What is the problem?
Do you agree that whether or not generations are being skipped, if you LOOK AT THE ACTUAL CHAPTER there is absolutely no way that the flood could have been much earlier than 2104 BC? Please, if you or other people think otherwise, explain how that can be, when the numbers are there in black and white.
B) You suggest that the flood may have been local. This is an interesting suggestion, but let’s make one observation. Reading the Genesis chapter itself, one gets the distinct idea that the flood is global. There would not be any reason to think it was not, FROM THE TEXT, unless we found insurmountable discrepancies with observed reality. Let us assume that you agree with me in A, and that the flood really was in 2104 BC. In that case, we would need to seriously consider the possibility of a local flood, but notice: only as a last resort. Why do I say this? Because the text clearly does not indicate anywhere that the flood was local.
Evidence that suggests the flood MAY be local:
A. The word “eretz” in Hebrew means land. It could mean a local piece of land, as in “eretz Yisroel” or it can mean the entire earth! Genesis 1 chapter 1: Bereshit bara Elohim et haShamayim ve’et ha’Eretz : In the Beginning, God (literally, The Powers) created the sky and the earth. (An aside: haShamayim also is related to ha shamayim, “the waters” — according to the Genesis belief that there was water above the firmament of the sky).
B. The fact that a global flood utterly contradicts geology, history, biology, etc.
Evidence that the flood was global:
A. When God warned Lot that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he had his angels simply tell Lot to leave. Lot simply left the area. All the wicked in the area got destroyed. It seems Noah was told to build an ark instead of leaving the area precisely because THE ENTIRE EARTH was destroyed.
B. Noah is told to save two of every animal. It is unreasonable to assume that animals were confined to just one area on the earth — once again, that contradicts science. For example, there were tigers in Asia as well as in Africa. Why would Noah have to save two of every animal (7 of the clean ones) if the flood did not wipe out most animals whose habitats extended beyond the flood’s reach? It is once again very clear: Noah took ALL the animals aboard the ark. This itself seems far fetched, since one wonders how e.g. Koalas or Llamas or Lemurs that can’t swim actually from Ararat back to their natural habitats, but hey, that could have been a miracle such as mass teleportation. Even though teleportation is never specifically mentioned in the Bible. Once again all we have to note is that Noah saved two from EVERY kind of animal, therefore the flood was global.
C. “Every living thing that is on the earth that has the breath of life” is mentioned as being killed in the flood. It sounds improbable that the flood merely killed “every living thing that is in the land that has the breath of life”. Why kill all the animals in a certain region?
D. If the flood was local, how could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 meters) above the mountains? Water usually levels out all over the world.
E. If the flood was local, people living on the edges would have escaped God’s judgment, by simply walking away from the area. This may include the nephilim, who were after all GIANTS, right? So they could presumably walk really fast!
And finally,
F. If the flood was local, God would never have broken his promise to never again send such a flood again. There have been lots of local floods since “the flood”.
Again I think ALL the arguments against the possibility of ANY flood are covered here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
and here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/flood.asp
So the flood could not have possibly happened in any shape or form. Correct me if I am wrong, and show me what is a plausible scenario in which Genesis 7 – 11 could be true in any meaningful sense.
If there is something I didn’t address, I’m sorry — definitely point it out — it’s just that the comment has already gotten too long, and I think these points do address a lot of what you said. I have numbered them to make it easier to respond to them.
Gregory,
We can dispense easily enough with answers that (as you put it) I and many other Christians would not accept. Neither you nor I are interested in arguing in favor of a form of Christianity that neither of us believes in.
My understanding of the telescoped genealogies is best explained in the link I provided, a considerably better written and more well-informed article than the one you linked to.
Why would I care to “LOOK AT THE ACTUAL CHAPTER” apart from what I can learn from Ancient Near East (ANE) scholarship? Why should our 21st Century “black and white” understanding rule over the interpretation, without being informed by ANE culture, language, and so on?
Why on earth would you think we could assume that? I could as easily “assume” that you believe in Young Earth Creation!
You are bound and determined not to pay any attention to scholarship, to larger context, to possible nuances in translation, or to anything but what you want to chauvinistically impose on the text from your myopic 21st century mindset.
Look, let’s just go ahead and stipulate this, agree on it, and be done with it: If I were to look at the text apart from any other scholarship, context, or background knowledge, I might conclude X. It doesn’t matter what X is. You can fill in the blank any way you want, and I would probably be willing to grant it to you. But so what? I’m not about to do that. I’m not going to look at the text apart from other scholarship, context, and background knowledge; and for the life of me I can’t imagine why you think there would be the slightest thing to gain from doing it that way. So how about if you just stop this silliness?
Now with respect to some of your enumerated objections, I could answer them one by one, sure. For instance your point F displays that you didn’t read what I have written: the Flood was local with respect to geography but universal with respect to the human race; and it follows clearly enough that God has kept his promise with respect to judging all of humanity again in that way. Other objections you’ve raised were answered in the linked article, and I’m pretty surprised you don’t seem to have noticed that.
So in view of that, let me ask you this. Is it possible that the flood was local, and occurred longer ago than 2104 B.C.? Or is it absolutely, rock-hard impossible to take any conclusion out of Scripture but that it was global and occurred in 2104 B.C.? Is it absolutely impossible that the interpretation I’ve provided you could be correct? Is yours the only conceivably possible way for it to be interpreted?
I’ve asked that question several ways because it’s important. You see, two days ago I demonstrated that as long as there is some possible credible interpretation of the Flood account, then we know what we really need to know, which is that (as far as the Flood question impinges upon it) Christianity is possibly true. And if so, and if the real, crucial question is whether Christianity is true, then it’s time to say we know enough about the Flood that we can move on to some other topic.
If we do move on to some other topic (or stay on this one if we must), would you do us all the favor of reading what we write and link to? If you’re serious about this discussion, that ought to be at least a minimum expectation. I’m still not quite convinced, in spite of your protestation, that you really want to have an honest dialogue—not when you only pay close attention to your half of it.
Tom, I am interested in having an honest discussion and finding out the truth. I think we are stuck on some point. I *have* read what you said, and I *am* responding to it by raising objections. I don’t see how you actually address the objections. Maybe there is some misunderstanding — the objections are in response to what you have already written!
Let’s discuss one point at a time.
POINT #1: Maybe the flood took place not around 2104 BC, but in fact thousands of years ago! LET US ADDRESS THIS POINT COMPLETELY BEFORE MOVING ON. I will stop jumping around.
I have also read this:
http://www.reasons.org/resources/non-staff-papers/the-genesis-genealogies
where the author argues that the genealogies have been telescoped.
I will bring the relevant section:
Notice that the author simply glosses over the logical problem. (This is not to say that the author hasn’t written a thoughtful article, but when it comes to this, central, crucial point, he simply does not address it head on and just moves on.) Here is the problem.
In Genesis 11, it says specifically that
1. Shem was 100 years old 2 years after the flood, and that year Arphaxad was born.
2. When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah.
3. When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber.
4. When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg.
5. When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu.
6. When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug.
7. When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor.
8. When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah.
9. Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.
The author suggests that maybe the genealogies were telescoped. Fine, let them be telescoped! Maybe they left people out. But notice that there is an unbroken chain:
Arphaxad – Shelah – Eber – Peleg – Reu – Serug – Nahor – Terah
I can grant you that maybe these weren’t actual sons. Maybe they were adopted. Maybe they were grandsons. The problem still remains! Each dash has a definite number of years. The only way you can escape this conclusion is to believe that “Shelah” of verse 13 is a completely different “Shelah” than the one of verse 14. Which I think you and I both agree is grasping at straws.
Now do you see that I have been addressing the article and the problem remains even if we grant all kinds of telescoping, “Ancient Near East” scholarship etc. My question is very simple. Either Genesis 11 is FICTIONAL, or the flood happened around 2104 BC. I have yet to see how to address this very obvious argument.
Notice what the author says:
1. It is not controversial that many Biblical genealogies are telescoped. – AGREED
2. The Genealogies of Genesis differ, however, by their inclusion of completely unambiguous statements about how long someone lived before the next person lived. – AGREED. THAT IS MY POINT.
3. So, some argue that our conclusions about other Biblical genealogies may not apply to Genesis 5 and 11 – YES. EXACTLY. The author of Genesis clearly took care of recording the actual length of time and keeping track of it.
4. Those holding Ussher’s chronology estimate that Adam and Eve were created around 6,000 years ago on the assumption that the Genesis genealogies are complete. – NO, THAT IS NOT THE ASSUMPTION. IT IS SUFFICIENT TO ASSUME THAT THE YEARS LISTED BETWEEN BIRTHS ARE TRUE. It is not necessary to assume that the Genealogies are complete. Therefore, this is where the author and I part ways.
5. Nothing in the text, however, requires that these genealogies be complete. — OK AND?
6. Biblical scholars who hold that the genealogies are telescoped would place the creation of Adam and Eve at around 10 to 30,000 years ago but perhaps as late as 60,000 years ago.[12] — I wonder what reasoning they employ to get these outlandish figures from the text. I think that is completely irresponsible, but there is no reason to debate the creation of the world when we are talking about the flood. Do these same biblical scholars place the flood before 2104 BC? In that case, how do they address the fact I have been repeatedly pointing out: Shelah is the same Shelah in verses 13 and 14, and the number of years is in black and white. Telescoping has NOTHING to do with it. It is a non sequitur.
I will agree.
Gregory,
There is a logical problem only if you insist that we read this passage through a modernist lens. The linked article explains multiple reasons not to consider that lens the right one. Everything else that you insist on (including the “logical problem”), and all the answers thereto, flow from that crucial attitude toward the text. The point is that there is good evidence that for the original writer and the original readers, the intent (regardless of how it appears to us thousands—thousands!—of years later in a completely different cultural framework) was not to convey that this was an unbroken chain. Yes, it appears that way to us; but no, it likely did not have that intent originally.
It seems that you consider your interpretation of the text to be the only possible one, the only way to view it. Any view other than yours is a non sequitur and illogical. If that is so, then you must regard Christianity to be not possibly true. (Note what I wrote in the last two paragraphs of my most recent long comment: that material is crucial.) I have spent a lot of time explaining why that is not so, and why I think it’s quite obvious that your position on the Flood is not the only possible one. But if you insist on it being the only possible interpretation, I have nothing more to say to you. You are quite convinced no position but yours could be right, and that’s the end of it.
Gregory, I have edited my last comment slightly since posting it, for clarity’s sake.
Hey Greg,
I know next to nothing about ANE history or chronologies so I am can only offer my thoughts as a layperson. You say that you’re willing to consider the idea that the genealogies are telescoped and that there could be people, possibly many, left out of the genealogies between those listed, as is certainly the case in other genealogies in the Bible. If that’s the case, let me suggest an explanation. What if “when X was Y years old he became the father of Z” refers to the age at which X had a son who eventually fathered Z? This is consistent with the Hebrew usage of father/fathered which often refers to a forefather or ancestor, not strictly to a biological father.
In other words, it would be a bit like saying, “When Abraham was 100 years old, he became the father of Israel.” Now actually, Isaac (not Israel) was born to Abraham at 100 years old, who later fathered Jacob, who was renamed Israel. So in saying “Abraham fathered Israel” an ancient Hebrew author would not be making a statement about direct paternity but about the beginning of an important line/dynasty. This is conventionally what happens in telescoped genealogies; the most important names are chosen and the others are left out. I’m not sure what the parallel in modern English would be. Perhaps something like this: “When Prescott Bush had lived 30 years, he became the father of the Bush dynasty.” In English, we would have to explicitly make refernce to a “dynasty”, but my understanding is that this is not necessarily the way the ancient Hebrews refered to dynasties. They often simply referred to the name of the most prominent member or founder of the dynasty as in “the house of David” or “the seed of Abraham”.
Does that help? What do other people think of this admittedly uninformed answer?
-Neil
Gregory unfortunately I ‘ve come to this debate late and though I have skimmed through I missed why you keep claiming that the actual year of the flood can be determined. Yes there are examples of text that spell out years etc but surely you must know that in biblical genealogies there are far more generations that have no such years included. Its quite impossible to determine the year of the flood because of these.
Second nothing is less impressive than a poster that thinks talk origins is the end all of any issue. Particularly from a poster that claims to not like bias. I have read several laughers on that site due to their extreme bias and find nothing of their rebuttal to the flood persuasive. Further to some of your comments – they seem blissfully unaware of those that hold that the flood was previous to Pangea breaking up. No need for your alleged teleportation jab. And you should at least become conversant with the other sides position. Your point c for example in post 115 is naive as to why God would wipe out a particular region because it does not take into effect that according to the Bible civilizations were mostly confined to that area and that all animals were present in the garden not in in far flung place such as Asia and Australia. There is nothing inherently unscientific about those claims unless you assume and presume that animals found in their local environment to day must have originated in the locals that we find them alive or in the fossil record. Such presumption had us believing that marsupials were native only to australia until we found them in South America.
Much of your objections are trite because you really don;t pay attention to the details. ANother quick example would be F. where you claim that God said he would never send a flood. There is no such passage the actual promise is that he would not destroy all life on whatever he was referring to by earth (eretz meaning land as you pointed out). There has never been such a flood since then but it does nor preclude floods that do not destroy all life on the inhabited portion of the earth.
And perhaps you can tell someone at Origin talks that insects need not have been on the ark they can survive on debri that floats along with many kinds of birds.
Tom, did you understand what I said? Read your comment 117. I am asking the same of you. You were very reasonable but it seems you are not hearing what I am saying. Either that or we are not understanding each other.
I am not insisting on any interpretation. Show me an interpretation that makes logical sense. I explained that “telescoping generations” are a “non sequitur” because “non sequitur” is latin for “it does not follow”. I went over his argument step by step and showed where we part ways: that the assumption is NOT that the generations are complete or that they cannot be telescoped. The assumption is very simple: the years which are written in Genesis 11 are TRUE. They correspond to REALITY. 35 years means 35 years. The only other assumption is that Shelah in verse 13 is the same Shelah that is named in verse 14.
You have to take a stand, Tom. I understand you are saying there are “other interpretations”, but I don’t understand how you deal with the assumptions I mentioned. Which of these assumptions are you saying is unfounded?
Let me know if I am being dense here.
I apologize if my last comment seems out of place – I was responding to your comment before you edited it, which was worded a little more strongly.
I took a stand, Gregory.
You say you are not insisting on any interpretation, but you actually are insisting that we view the chronologies through a modernist lens. I have shown you an interpretation that makes logical sense, but you still ask me to do so. I know what non sequitur means, never fear. I have shown why your assumption concerning Genesis 11 is not proper. I have explained how I have dealt with the assumptions you mentioned. The unfounded one is that we need to assume that the chronologies in Genesis 11 must be interpreted in a strict literal sense.
Now, I’ve responded to everything you said in your most recent comment, and interestingly I find that I need provide no new response; I only need refer to responses I have already given. You haven’t seen it: you are incapable and/or you refuse to see it. Decide for yourself whether you’re being dense.
I didn’t think I softened anything when I edited that last comment. I tried to strengthen it. My last edit was before 4:52 pm—were you working off an email version of it?
I’d be willing to hear from you what you might say differently now.
Neil: I have read your answer and yours is the first comment regarding this issue that (in my humble opinion) puts forth an interpretation that ADDRESSES the actual contents of the text.
That is a pretty cool interpretation, I like it for its originality. I myself had been saying that maybe the “long lived patriarchs” were not people at all, but rather, they were nations. Meaning, Methuselah was not nearly 1000 years old, but rather, Methuselah was a nation much like Israel.
I would like to say two things:
1) Tom — is this what you were referring to when you had another interpretation in mind? Is there another possibility?
2) If this is the only interpretation, let’s discuss it. Can anyone think of another one? I personally cannot. Again my aim is to find the truth, not to “win” the argument. Let’s see if this interpretation has any “fatal flaws”. I understand that how “fatal” a flaw is may depend on who is considering the flaw. But nevertheless, one step at a time. Are there any other interpretations, or is this the only alternative one? Can we all agree that we are not able to come up with any alternative interpretations that make logical sense?
Greg
Gregory,
This is amazing. You say you’ve read the linked pages, which contain another credible interpretation. You say that interpretation fails because of the chronology issue. You insist on your modernist interpretation of the chronology being the only allowable one. I cannot find a single place where you have even acknowledged, much less answered substantively, what I have repeatedly said about the modernist literal approach being out of bounds for ANE literature like this, given that we have evidence from other ANE literature that they treated chronologies like this differently.
And now you wonder whether Mike’s interpretation might be the only credible one, and you say that it’s the first one that has substantively addressed the text. You ask, “Can we all agree that we are not able to come up with any alternative interpretations that make logical sense?”
Wow.
Tom:
I outlined my premises, and asked which one you rejected. They were:
A) The years quoted in Genesis 11 correspond to real years in the real world
B) Arphaxad in one verse is the same Arphaxad in the very next verse.
I really thought that this implied
RESULT) The flood happened around 2104 BC
As do, I might add, all Orthodox Jews of this day, and the Talmud, which was written by Jews interpreting their own scriptures.
If you disagreed with one of them, we can discuss it.
I will try to isolate the point of contention very clearly.
Do you disagree with premise A, or premise B? Or both?
I find your statement “chronologies should not be interpreted literally” to be very vague. Take one fixed interpretation — it doesn’t have to be the right one — and let’s consider it. Does it reject premise A? Does it reject premise B?
Personally I thought Neil’s comment was very helpful. He pointed out I had another assumption which is the one he challenged:
C) “When A lived B years, he became the father of C” implies that C’s life began at the time that is being referenced, and therefore when it says C has lived D years, that is D years later.
It is an interesting suggestion! I was able to accept his interpretation for the moment because at least it was obvious which assumption he rejected. Simply saying “non literal” does not clearly indicate WHAT that means. I could easily say “Jesus did not literally rise from the dead, you think the only interpretations are the ones that are literal” and that wouldn’t mean ANYTHING. It’s too vague. I want to get to the bottom of this misunderstanding.
So when you said “non literal”, did you have in mind an interpretation that rejected premise A, or premise B, or all along you had in mind an interpretation that rejected premise C? Or you didn’t have any alternative interpretation in mind and were just sure there must be a non literal one?
Mike:
You must understand there are soooo many positions. I am conversant and understand where people are coming from in many of them. Everyone has a different idea of how to avoid the logical problems. I even brought some of them into the discussion, but it is counterproductive. We should focus on ONE thing at a time, otherwise we will never get anywhere. I will be the first to admit this is my fault, I must learn to focus on thing at a time.
I will try to make my point clear one last time:
I am not insisting on any “modernist” interpretation. I am not insisting on anything except that we keep track of what we are REALLY saying.
You say there exists a (non-literal) interpretation of Genesis that is true. Can you pick an actual interpretation, fix it, so we can TALK about it? I insist only that the interpretation make SENSE.
You call it a “modernist approach” to believe my assumptions:
A) The years quoted in Genesis 11 correspond to real years in the real world
B) Arphaxad in one verse is the same Arphaxad in the very next verse.
I believe any rational person in history would have this approach, no matter when they lived.
But even THEN, I say, if you come up with an interpretation that REJECTS one of these, please speak up and tell me: WHAT Is the alternative interpretation, and what alternative to A and B does it affirm?
That is as far as I will go to clarify what I think should be abundantly clear from me enumerating the assumptions I am making.
Gregory, you say,
Then you are demonstrably wrong, based on the evidence provided on the linked page.
My interpretation is that the chronologies there in Genesis skip generations. That means that for the original authors/audience, B was optional. It would not be so for us as authors/audiences today, but the evidence indicates that they did approach genealogies that way.
Have I not said as much several times already?
I think I have read through most of the posts on this thread and feel sufficiently up to speed now to possibly add support to the idea that the flood of Gen. 6-9 was ‘indeed’ global, the genealogies of Genesis 11 are mathematical in nature and when added together give credence to the idea of a six-thousand year old earth, (assuming Abraham lived circa 2000BC) and are sufficient in nature as revealed by God to settle the issue. The idea of ‘modernist interpretations’ is ad hominem in nature, a labeling that wishes to avoid the text itself. Those of a 4.5 billion year old mindset for the age of the earth must draw and quarter those of us who take the text as it reads, as the ‘age of the earth’ and whether there was a global flood or not, is central to not looking like fools in the eyes of the world.
Please consider ‘open season’ on me, and let’s see where this goes.
Let’s just bear in mind that the larger question is whether Christianity is possibly true in light of the Flood accounts; and that for that, all we need to do is to show that there is at least one interpretation of the Flood narratives that is credible in view of both Bible and geology.
Yes! Now, Tom, you have taken a stand. You are saying that my assumption B, is wrong:
B) Arphaxad in one verse is the same Arphaxad in the very next verse.
So whoever wrote Genesis 11 was aware that they had written:
A was 32 years old when he begat B, and after that, he lived X years and begat other *sons and daughters*
B was 32 years when he begat C…
In each of the 8 cases, the formula is A begat B… B begat C …
Basically you are saying it is a coincidence that the names are exactly the same 8 times in a row. One of the B was not B.
I agree, that may be true. It may be that Adam of Genesis 4 is not really
Adam of Genesis 3, and that only our modern minds would insist on making that connection. I will admit I don’t think I have any better arguments than:
1) The author was aware they were writing a genealogy, since they prefaced it by saying “This is the account of Shem’s family line.” FAMILY LINE.
2) The author was aware that they matched each name to the next.
3) One would expect an author at any time in history to realize that A begat B, B begat C, C begat D right next to each other to imply that B is still B and C is still C. You are saying this is a “modern” understanding. But an ancient author could have at least REALIZED that the names are the same but the people are different in the list which they called “the family tree of Shem”. And thus, they might have clarified it if it was not their intent. Since they did not clarify it, if we assume that B was not B, then we have to conclude that the author of Genesis simply did not care to clarify “the family line of Shem”.
I have not seen anything that would suggest to me you rejected B in particular. If you like, you can show me where you did, but honestly I am more interested in discussing the possibilities than figuring out if you or I was wrong.
What do you think of Neil’s suggestion that assumption C is wrong:
C) “When A lived B years, he became the father of C” implies that C’s life began at the time that is being referenced, and therefore when it says C has lived D years, that is D years later.
It seems to me to be an interesting one. But Neil, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it says:
A was 32 years old when he begat B, and after that, he lived X years and begat other *sons and daughters*
The word “other” suggests that B was part of the group that one would call “sons and daughters”. The presence of the word “daughters” especially seems to suggest a biological connection, as daughters are never mentioned (as far as I can recall) as highlights of a future family tree / nation, much less repeatedly and generically for each of the forefathers. One would assume that this was an actual son.
Also I would like to point out that the author specifically uses the Hebrew words for “family line” when they start the genealogy. They say, “This is the account of Shem’s family line.”.
The other question I would ask is, in which sense is someone 35 when indirectly beget someone many years in the future? It seems to me that this is a biological fact – they are 35 years old, and begat a direct child. Otherwise, why give this 35? Before Tom accuses me of not reading his link, I realize that the link says it *may* be like the death years which indicate that the people lived a nice full life beyond 100, even though the link acknowledges that there is zero precedent for this in the Bible and it’s mere speculation. Tom and Neil, I would say that there is absolutely no reason to say someone is 35 years old when they “begat” someone hundreds of years later. I know, Tom, that you use the “ANE” mindset as a wildcard, so maybe there’s a chance ancient people really did throw out numbers like 35, who knows. I admit, if you think like that, anything is possible. Maybe God didn’t REALLY give the law to Moses, but ancient people thought he did in some non literal way.
Greg
I may as well voice my own opinion, briefly mentioned in passing by Tom, that Gen 1-11 can contain plenty of ‘literal’ truth in them, yet still not be intended as start to finish hard literal truth themselves. I’m not sure if this makes a person non-inerrantist, but that too seems on the table while still maintaining Christianity as true.
I won’t speak on this much here, since Tom’s already trying to focus on the one question and angle entirely, but I do offer it up.
“Please consider ‘open season’ on me, and let’s see where this goes.”
As one of “(T)hose of a 4.5 billion year old mindset for the age of the earth” I can assure you that I don’t want to declare open season on you or “draw and quarter those of (you) who take the text as (you believe) it reads”. If you’re convinced of the above then you are. I know if he reveals to me it’s only 8,000 years old I’m going to say, “Praise God!” I often wonder if God reveals to you that the earth really is 4.5 billion years old what you will say?
Tom,
I may not have the gist of it quite yet, sorry. I’ll reserve comment until further clarification.
Hi BillT,
Convinced or not convinced, special revelation to you alone or special revelation to me alone, is not the issue. The issue is the text. You must deal with the text. What does it say?
Gregory Magarshak:
No, it’s about the actual claims that every religion makes about historical events. Either they happened, or they didn’t.
Coming in late, Greg, I’m trying to get up to speed on all your comments. Is the above comment the gist of your problem as to why you find it extremely hard to remain in your faith?
Sorry for all bold above, not my intent, didn’t close off the HTML tag after Magarshak. Still in bold however as I type this. Must have hit an errant keystroke.
Gregory,
Ok, if you accept the interpretation I suggested as plausible, can you think of any “fatal flaws” in it?
-Neil
P.S. All my writing is coming out bold too
Yes Steve, that is my main point. Religious people and atheists go off on these grand discussions about good and evil, or whether this world was created by a personal god, and whether our prayers are actually answered, when in reality, one can determine whether the religion is true or not in a simpler way. The atheist doesn’t believe because, in the back of their mind, they think the historical claims of the religion are bogus. I used the flood as the best example I know, because
1) Most religious people would agree that the text about the flood means what it says, which cannot be said of the creation story
2) There are lots of ways to disprove that a flood happened around 2104 BC.
I have a lot of respect for faith, and I think leaps of faith are fine. The whole atheist schtick with “there’s no evidence for your position” is not good enough to get someone who already believes something to stop believing it. But even if you start believing something, and then realize that it couldn’t have possibly happened, you should be honest with yourself: if this was Islam or another religion you don’t believe, would a comparable or even smaller amount of proof be required for you to discount it? If yes, then you should examine if you are holding on to the idea for no better reason than because you are biased towards it. After all, Islam also threatens people with hell in some variations, etc. yet most Christians are unconcerned with that. Some do it out of ignorance, but others do it because they think they have good reasons to believe Islam is false. That is to say, they can disprove islam for themselves. That is what I feel happens with Judaism and Christianity, because of stories like the flood, exodus, etc. The flood is just the biggest example.
As for me, I am torn, because I started out Jewish, then believed Christianity as a teenager, and I really would like to believe this if it were true. But at the same time I will not compromise the truth, and if I see that people are applying way more lenient standards to their own belief than they are to other people’s beliefs, I will say so. And if I think there is strong evidence something didn’t happen, I will say so. I would rather investigate and ultimately get closer to the truth. I hope and trust that God understands that I am trying my best to understand the truth, and that I have serious reasons to doubt the claims most religions are making. Reasons which I can readily discuss, and would like to address. By the way, if you want to know why I still do believe, check out http://magarshak.com/blog
PS: It looks like Tom’s blog allows raw HTML to be entered but if the tag is closed incorrectly, the comment will be posted anyway. In your case, you wrote [b /] instead of [/b] which is why it happened. (Instead of square brackets, you should use angle ones, I just used the square ones for illustration.)
i tried to fix it ….. did it work?
Maybe this will work
Home from a shopping trip. Doing some family stuff, but at least I have time to close that tag.
Steve,
I think that the text was written in a way that the age of the earth is not clearly discernable from it and that is the way it was intended to be.
YAY!
Greg,
See the following link for a lengthy discussion of how terms like “ben” (son) or “yalad” (begat) were used loosely in Hebrew literature:
http://www.reasons.org/resources/non-staff-papers/the-genesis-genealogies
So I don’t think that the assumption that “yalad” may not refer to direct biological fatherhood is just speculation. It seems to be supported by biblical Hebrew usage. Also, after a bit of research, it seems that this interpretation was the one favored by conservative 19th century Christians like B.B. Warfield and Charles Hodge.
That being said, if you accept that this interpretation is at least plausible, can we finally move on to Jesus? As I said, I think this is the big mistake that people make. Most people (and certainly I myself) are inerrantists because we believe that Jesus is God. Arguing over inerrancy itself will therefore not be very helpful. Far more fruitful would be a discussion of Jesus. Who was he? Who did he claim to be? Did he rise from the dead? I would ask these questions first before returning to inerrancy.
-Neil
Gregory,
I appreciate the spirit of your comment here. Just a thought on this:
What I was trying to say in the original post (and since then too) is that if the Flood’s truth is not so cut-and-dried as that, then the door is open to examine other issues, especially Jesus Christ himself. And I think it’s clear that the Flood is not clearly and certainly a false record. It does not amount to, as you say, a disproof of Christianity.
I’m not holding on to Christianity just because of bias. There is considerable evidence in its favor, especially for the NT accounts. (The same is not true for Islam, so the comparison serves much more to support Christianity than to undermine it.) I see so much positive evidence for it that the Flood accounts, which in my view are ambiguous at worst, just don’t weigh very strongly as evidence against it.
Fair enough. Tom, I think we have both made our points and positions clear regarding the flood issue, and can move on to the next topic of my letter if you wish. I like where we ended up: we realized what is the source of our convictions on this issue. You believe that Genesis 11 is true, but the account in Genesis 11 may not be literal in the sense that either Arpaxad of verse 13 is not the same Arpaxad of verse 12 (or someone else in the list has an ambiguous name) or else Neil’s suggestion, that begetting someone at 35 does not preclude that they were actually born hundreds of years later.
You are free to believe that, of course, and then the flood is not very problematic. I could continue to press points that I consider relevant, eg that God who told Noah to take “two of each kind” should have known that there are some animals which do not have male and female sexes (such as certain slugs), thay the ark as described could not have been a seaworthy vessel, and tons of other things, but I think our time would be better spent looking at other issues.
Let me personally say that the reason I wantto move on is because I am glad to give Christianitythe benefit of the doubt in the sense that I want to hear arguments in its favor, and I thinkthat can be done by getting off the flood topic. If we had all the time in the world I would certainly explore the issue further, but I am happy to have made at least some substantial progress and had us both clarify for ourselves what we must be saying for our positions to hold.
I think I may return and address Neil because he deserves an answer. Neil: I consider the 3 things I said in my last comment addressed to you to be the “fatal flaw” taken together. Let me know what your response is to them if you’d like to dig further.
Anyway, Tom, I think we are ready to move on to the next and I can learn something new about the Christian position. I hope that discussing things with me on your blog hasn’t soured you towards my quest for truth. I promise to focus closer attention on everything you write instead of jumping around as I did in the beginning of this thread. I just wanted to show that the flood is not the ONLY reason I doubt Christianity but rather a great illustration of my approach: either something happened or it didn’t.
Lastly I just want to ask why you don’t give Islam the same benefit of the doubt. After all there are a billion muslims convinced that Mohammad was Allah’s prophet and Islam is the true revelation. Clearly your assertions against Islam must have been considered and addressed by at least some. Or do you assert that so many people are just wrong and incorrect to believe? Perhaps they can address your arguments which make you mot believe Islam, if presented with an opportunity to discuss them with you. I personally think I have made a strong case that Genesis 11 cannot possibly have been intended to mean anything other than what it says – and you and Neil helped me nail down the premises for that position. But you disagree. Maybe you are likewise saying Islam is wronh for reason X which muslims would be happy to set you straight on and clarify.
In any case, I want to reiterate my basic premise and move on:
“In the absence of evidence one way or the other, belief is a persomal choice. Once evidence enters the picture, it must be considered. If it treatens to invalidate your current view, you must consider it, and if it is compelling, acknowledge it and either change your view or at least indicate STRONGER evidence for your view and be able to show why it is stronger.”
Do you agree? I think we both benefitted from this discussion at least by clarifying what it is we must beliee in orderto maintain our positions, and this is a vast step towards a final agreement than just having never considered the issue. I would liketo thank you for taking my points about the flood seriously, and I think it benefited you, me and your readers.
Greg
We can move on, Greg. I’ll give you the last word on this, even though in your last word you have again misrepresented my position. Be aware that I have some other items in my queue that will come first.
Concerning Islam: I think I have given it the same benefit of the doubt that you give Christianity, maybe even more. But I don’t care to get into that religions pros and cons.
I’m basically in agreement with you on belief and evidence.
Gregory Magarshak:
Yes Steve, that is my main point. Religious people and atheists go off on these grand discussions about good and evil, or whether this world was created by a personal god, and whether our prayers are actually answered, when in reality, one can determine whether the religion is true or not in a simpler way. The atheist doesn’t believe because, in the back of their mind, they think the historical claims of the religion are bogus.
Dear Greg, (can I call you Greg, or do you prefer Gregory?)
Thanks for your honest answers. I actually asked the question because even though I think the question is valid, it is not the ‘correct’ place to start. The skeptic has a much bigger problem. The evidentialist questions are really a red herring for the skeptic because he cannot answer the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions (and knows this), so seeks to attack the evidentialist questions first, thinking that once he disproves those, his argument is intact. This has basically been your approach through all these posts. Don’t get me wrong, questions about evidence are important, but the bigger problem is how one answers the metaphysical and epistemological questions together first, clarifying ‘existence’ and ‘being’, and the nature of ‘knowing’, or how one comes to ‘true justified belief’, before moving on to evidence, and whose facts best fit the world we live in.
As I mentioned above, I am coming in late to these discussions, and it seems like things are winding down here, so maybe this discussion would be best served on another thread.
That’s going to be a great segue to the next item in the queue, Steve.
Sounds good, guys! I must say, I am enjoying these discussions — not the least of which because I respect your positions. Steve at the outset I can tell you that I disagree with exactly that kind of approach, and I’ll tell you why.
I’ve seen a lot of religious reasoning proceed this way (William Lane Craig does it a lot) :
How can we answer the big questions of life? Where did this all come from? Is there a God? Is that God personal? Does he answer prayers? Did He send Jesus to die for us on the cross? Yes, I believe this is the most reasonable explanation! Christianity must be true. I debate the finer philosophical points and chose … presuppositionalist, calvinist, molinism. Let’s just say. Man, those Catholics are so wrong with their indulgences… man those Mormons area cult, they’re not actually gonna get saved … oh, there appear to be logical problems with lots of stuff in the Old and New Testaments … well I’m not too concerned about those, because I already know the answer to the BIG picture, and I have faith it’s all gonna work out. How? Because I KNOW my core beliefs are true. (I would respect this if I could believe the Holy Spirit revealed something to this person and as a result they are fully convinced no matter what, as WLC says. I wonder what he would say if Jesus came to him personally and said “listen, they made this whole thing up about me! Don’t listen to Paul! Those gospels present a distorted view of me! etc.”)
I am paraphrasing and sketching, obviously I haven’t represented everyone’s position faithfully with this thing, but exaggerated to highlight a point.
The PROBLEM with this approach is that we don’t have any intuition about things so removed from our everyday lives as “how did the universe start” or “if there is a God, does he care about X” or “is there an afterlife” and “will everything be put right in the end in the afterlife”? We come to some conclusions which clearly contradict tons of other people. We can’t all be right. That should already be a sign that the conclusion is biased (usually, the bias is your upbringing and which society you live among, as like grooms and attracts like). At the very least, you will be an atheist with respect to every other religion such as Islam, Mormons, Scientology (not hard to be an atheist with respect to that one lol), etc. So, you see no problem with pointing out why Islam shouldn’t be followed, despite that it threatens you with hell if you don’t. You should know that there are tons of orthodox Jews who can tell you why Christianity can’t be true. And tons of atheists who can tell Jews why none of this is divine at all.
The atheist on the other hand goes “there is not a shred of real evidence for what you claim, except your book. Why do I have to change my life until you prove this to me…”
The PROBLEM with this approach is that is not exactly indicative of how people learn either. At least it won’t lead you to supernatural explanations for things. But it’s unnecessarily restrictive — if science hasn’t proven something beyond a shadow of a doubt, you don’t believe it? Usually you require a certain amount of evidence before you start believing.
I disagree with both approaches. I think the most rational approach is like this.
You wonder how this all got here. Or maybe you get preached to by a Christian. You look around, find Judaism and Christianity talking about one God. You see Greek Mythology talking about limited gods that quarrel among each other. You discount all the polytheistic religions. You think the monotheistic ones have a chance. How did you arrive at this conclusion? YOU, how did it happen for you? For me, it happened because it was called “Greek Mythology”, but when I stopped to think about it rationally, I found something that couldn’t be true in those religions, and it was so easy, it took like a minute. Apollo carrying the Sun around in his horse drawn chariot that goes across the sky? Please, I can see how the Greeks had that myth, but we know the Sun is a giant star. Now, the Greek apologist could come and say: 1) hey, there are 30 thousand Zeus worshippers today, and 2) don’t take our stories so literally. There is at least a way in which Greek mythology could be true. I would say, sorry buddy, by applying the SAME STANDARDS that you apply to other religions, plus giving you a little more benefit of the doubt, I have found that your religion is just nonsense. But I’m glad that it let you have a Delphi oracle back in the day and be the center of the known world on all the maps. Doesn’t mean I have to follow it today.
Then you start investigating and realize that Judaism seems to be the only religion (that I know of) that actually claims to have started with 3 million people. The book of Deuteronomy points this unique feature out as proof that the Exodus happened and God really spoke to all the nation, and it accurately predicts the Jewish exile and that Israel will never perish off the face of the earth. Both of these are very unlikely predictions that have come true. Based on this I have some serious inclination to keep researching. Without it, I would dismiss all abrahamic religions as mythology.
And then comes the question: did the Messiah come? I have given some evidence in this thread that Jesus was not the Messiah, but I think that deserves a whole separate discussion. On the other hand, there is one argument that Jesus is the Messiah: there hasn’t been another for 2000 years. Some prophecies seem to indicate he should have come by now.
And then Christians come along and claim to have convincing evidence that Jesus was born of a virgin, died, was resurrected on the third day, is the Messiah, and is the son of God. This once again deserves at least a discussion. But in order to find this evidence I have to read books. It’s not a sound bite. I should say that I am sure there are orthodox Jews who have read Lee Strobel and even WLC and have not converted to Christianity. Nevertheless I am reading those books because I want to know as much positive evidence for Christianity. Just realize that there are clearly objections to the conclusion, even from people who have seen the evidence, as as long as they are: muslims, atheists, jews, etc. And they all handle it in different ways. Jews say Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, but stole kabbalistic secrets — and they can prove it from their scriptures. Muslims say that Paul wasn’t a real apostle or prophet and led the church astray. Atheists say this whole thing was based on legend and nothing supernatural happened. For the moment, I am mostly convinced the atheists are right.
That said, I accept Jesus’s gift on the cross for dying for my sins. Because if God has truly given me a free gift, why not accept it? if it turns out to be true, good. If I find out it’s not true, then I will have lost nothing by believing this. But I am not going to stop seeking answers to questions in order to keep believing what I am believing. As for the “sin no more” part, I must say that Christians are all over the place with this … some Christians believe works matter, others believe they don’t. If you ask Christians all over the world what list of actions they consider sins, you’ll get wildly different answers. To me, “sin” is simple: transgressing the Law of God is sin. Old Testament law was given to the Jews, the Noahide laws are the only binding laws on the gentiles. This attempt to abolish Old Testament law has left Christians without a clear picture of what sin actually is, and thus nothing to stay away from after being converted, other than what the particular church has decided is “sin” in that community, and things that one would stay away from anyway, such as murder, etc.
I got long winded here just to give you an idea of what I believe, so you know where I am coming from in future discussions. My point is: we don’t know the BIG picture, so making a guess about it and then ignoring what we DO know about this world, is wrong. If our answer to the BIG picture fails in simple things that we DO know (hey look … Apollo can’t possibly be driving the sun around in a chariot, and hey look, Olympus is now empty), and there are no good explanations, it’s time to jettison those beliefs.
Greg
Greg,
At the very least, you will be an atheist with respect to every other religion such as Islam, Mormons, Scientology (not hard to be an atheist with respect to that one lol), etc. So, you see no problem with pointing out why Islam shouldn’t be followed, despite that it threatens you with hell if you don’t. You should know that there are tons of orthodox Jews who can tell you why Christianity can’t be true. And tons of atheists who can tell Jews why none of this is divine at all.
I see this claim a lot, but I don’t think it’s true as stated. I’m a Catholic, but I’m not an ‘atheist with respect to’ Islam, or Judaism, or Protestantism, or… etc, the list goes on. Now, I obviously have disagreements with other religions. But Catholics have internal disagreements (See those partial to Aquinas’ philosophy interact with those partial to Duns Scotus, for example) without it ending up as ‘I’m an atheist with respect to your religion’. I think the truth is more complicated than that and, particularly when it comes to God, there are some fundamental claims and concepts that are often held in common between these religions.
I think part of the problem is that it makes no sense to say “atheist with respect to judaism” because judaism isn’t a God. It’s a religion which worships a God. But if you say “atheist with respect to the God of judaism”, then that’s a clear example where no, many Christians would disagree strongly and affirm that they believe in the same God as the jews, even if jews have an imperfect understanding of that God. And if you say, “well, you reject the teachings of judaism”, again that’s a problem because various jewish teachings are respected and believed by Christians.
Hi Greg,
You say: “You are free to believe [your interpretations of the flood], of course, and then the flood is not very problematic”. Good! I think that’s our point. Both Tom and I probably take a similar view of the flood in that there are several possibilities, none of which is entirely satisfying, but all of which are potentially plausible. You seem to agree. But in that case, I’m not sure what you mean by “fatal flaws.” A “fatal flaw” is usually one that renders an explanation impossible, not merely unlikely. If you agree that the interpretation I suggested is at least possible, then it must not contain a fatal flaw. I was looking over your responses, but couldn’t find one directed to me which listed three fatal flaws. Let me just try to find three that you’ve mentioned which seem to be sticking points for you and briefly describe potential answers:
1. “begat” necessitates direct biological fatherhood. Therefore, the flood must have happened around 2100 BC
2. God told Noah to take two of each sex on the ark, which makes a local flood impossible
3. God didn’t just send Noah elsewhere, which makes a local flood impossible
I think we’ve settled the first point. The Hebrew “yalad = begat” does appear to be used lossely, making it possible quite a long time passed between each member of the genealogy in Gen. 5.
Regarding he second point, this was answered in one of the first links Tom sent out. Noah took all of the local species of animals on board the ark with him so that he could repopulate the vast, but not global, region that was destroyed by the flood. Naturally, he would need one of each gender to repopulate this area!
Regarding the third point, one of the reasons that Noah was told to build an ark was as a warning to the surrounding people. In 2 Pet 2:5, we’re told that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” and in Gen. 7:10 the narrative says that Noah and his family sat in the completed ark for seven days before the flood came. I think these elements suggest that God intended the huge ark to be a visible warning to the surrounding people to repent (which they obviously ignored). If God had simply sent Noah off into the hills, there would have been no “preaching of righteousness” or any warning given. Indeed, something very similar happens in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah when God himself visits the cities in advance of his judgment.
Anyway, I think those are all plausible answers which can be found, for instance, on the Reasons to Believe website. But read my next comment, which I believe is a far more important issue.
-Neil
Greg,
Ok, for the far more important question, I want to examine your discussions of an “evidentialist” approach to the various religions. Although I don’t consider myself strict a presuppositionalist, this is where I think presuppositionalism has some valuable insights into the nature of belief.
Imagine that I am an Eastern monist and you are trying to convince me that the objective universe exists. “What evidence,” I demand, “do you have to suggest that the material world is not an illusion?” You say to me “Look, here is all sort of evidence from science, nature, human experience, etc…” “That’s ridiculous,” I say, “All those pieces of ‘evidence’ are part of the illusion! You have to assume that the universe is real to produce evidence that it is real. Your reasoning is circular!” And I would be right. All of us have underlying presuppositions which act as lenses through which we view all of the evidence (this can be formulated mathematically using Bayes’ theorem). These prior assumptions are not logically derived from any evidence; they are a priori axiomatic assumptions. This is why I disagree with strict “evidentialism”. I do not think that there is enough evidence to convince a skeptic that Christianity is true because I don’t think there is enough evidence to convince a skeptic that anything is true. Not just irrational skeptics. But rational, thinking skeptics. I don’t believe there are any rigorous logical constraints on what we take as axioms. And if not, then how can we possibly use evidence to overturn an axiom? Axioms are the very presuppositions that allow us to process the evidence!
But let me go a bit further. The Bible says that our axioms are not actually arbitrary. Every human has one, implicit, central axiom that lies buried deep in our psyche. That axiom is: “I hate God and want to be free of him” This is not a propositional axiom, but an emotional axiom. This presupposition underlies all our reasoning and logic and religion, not just as atheists but also as Christians. It is part of our nature as fallen humans. But now you can see what effect this axiom will have on everything that follows. We will naturally gravitate towards any presupposition or system of belief which allows us to escape the unbearable weight of God’s presence, whether those presuppositions lead us to naturalism, or moralism or religion. The underlying motivation is always the same: “I hate God; He is not worthy of worship; I am my own master.” This is the depth of our problem as human beings and this is why evidence is so limited in its utility. I have seen atheists deny free will, human responsility, reason and even the laws of logic to escape theistic arguments! Similarly, I find in myself a deep desire to run and hide when God seems too real or too close to me. Where does this motivation come from if not from some deep, hidden desire in each of our hearts to be free of God at all costs?
Anyway, all of this is laid out in Romans 1-2 and this whole perspective has greatly informed my approach to apologetics. I would urge you to consider these ideas seriously and also to remember that I am not accusing you personally of harboring these ideas. This is a problem endemic to all human beings, myself included. This is one of the main reasons I am a Christian: because only the Bible diagnoses this radical problem and offers a solution so equally radical. In considering the truth of religions, we therefore might want to start with a more existential approach and ask: what is my real motivation in life? What do I truly desire? And what is my fundamental problem in life? What exactly is wrong with me?
Anyway, I think Tom will post a short idea that I had which may help illuminate some of these issues. Hopefully, it will be helpful to you.
-Neil
Hi Greg,
We ‘do’ know the big picture. That’s the point. It’s there ingrained in your mind and experience as a human being. Everyone starts with a set of presuppositions or biases, but the question becomes whose bias is the right bias to be biased with. I’m not trying to be cute, but don’t let anyone tell you you’re not biased. I look forward to the discussions that will follow re: Tom’s new thread.
Crude and Neil: Well, this is where we get into the question of degrees. If a fatal flaw is something that makes an explanation completely impossible, then almost nothing will ever be a fatal flaw, nor will it be an absolute proof, or disproof, etc. We can never be 100% sure of anything, except perhaps mathematical truths and things which are true by definition. (Logical positivism.) Usually what happens is that we have a certain reason to believe something or not believe something, a certain threshhold.
Often, people are unaware that there are good reasons not to believe what they believe, and vice versa. What constitutes “good” reasons? That is relative to each person. But often, you can compare the STRENGTHS of the different reasons according to your own standards, or agreed upon common standards, and that is the point!
What I am saying is, that people should at least be honest about the standards which they apply to evaluating evidence. If you don’t need much evidence to discount Islam, but need a lot of evidence to discount Christianity, this implies that you have a lot of even stronger evidence for Christianity, OR that you are biased towards it.
What I mean by my “evidentalist” rhetoric boils down to this: be honest about the standards you are using to arrive at the current conclusions. Realize that there are people in the world who hold entirely different conclusions, even though they may be aware of your evidence. For example, I believe that rejecting my premises A, B, and C while being a Christian is an extremely flimsy position. You may not believe that, but why do I believe that? Because some places in the text which have very inconvenient implications if taken literally, are explained away by “this was definitely not meant to be taken literally”, while other places where there is no such problem (yet) many of the same believers insist “look at the text! Does it not say XYZ?”
Let me give one example. Let’s assume that Jews really had the truth in 100 BC, and Sinai really happened and they had the law. Why do you believe Jesus is God, and that there are three persons of the godhead, and not seven? I could easily bring the following verses to you:
“I am going to my father, for the father is greater than I”, http://bible.cc/john/14-28.htm – this would imply that the father is not Jesus, since the father has more greatness than Jesus
“Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No one is good — except God alone” http://bible.cc/mark/10-18.htm — this would imply that God is not Jesus, since God alone is good, and Jesus used this to explain why he took issue with people calling him good
Jesus prays to God: “Yet not as I will, but as you will” http://bible.cc/matthew/26-39.htm — this would imply that Jesus is not God, because their wills are different
“God has raised this Jesus…” (Acts 2:32)
“God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36)
If we had just these verses, it would be clear that Jesus is not God — in the sense that any case that Jesus is God would face severe problems in the form of questions like, “if Jesus is God, how could his will be different from God?” or “how could Jesus have the greatness of the Father, God and at the same time say that the Father is greater than he?”
Many people are indeed convinced by the evidence from the text:
A Catholic writes:
“I agree with this. I’m a Catholic and up to know I am still asking myself about the Holy Trinity thing. Most of us Catholics think Jesus is God itself too but in my own humble view, Jesus was sent by God to save the world and teach God’s word, and not to take place of his Father. Peace be upon you!”
People who believe Islam argue persuasively based on textual evidence, that Jesus is not God and not even Paul thought so:
http://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-10-1.htm
But, of course, the Catholic who is committed to the church doctrine, or indeed anyone who is committed to affirming the Nicene creed, believes there are exactly 3 persons in the godhead. And Jesus is God. They would not bat an eye when faced with this textual evidence. Instead, they would try to find their own textual evidence to support THEIR position. They would consider the other people’s approach “not sophisticated enough”.
Similarly, are we saved by faith alone? I can bring many passages that imply we still need to follow the law, including Jesus and God Himself saying that the law should be followed for all time. But people will spin this however they want.
So let’s invoke my point. Sure, you can spin things one way or the other, and there will never be a “fatal flaw” as long as you are biased towards a position. You will always weigh it more. But what if you were able to identify and remove your bias? Realize there are others who believe the opposite position while respecting the same book.
The key here is: be honest with yourself, are you subjecting both verses to the same logical treatment? I find numerous examples of double standards in writings by believers, even by reasons.org . I can point them out if you like. I am saying, people should remove the double standards, and you then they will find common ground with one another.
Neil, I will copy and paste what I wrote before, to have in one place what I consider to be “fatal flaw” for your interesting hypothesis:
1) It says: A was 32 years old when he begat B, and after that, he lived X years and begat other *sons and daughters*
The word “other” suggests that B was part of the group that one would call “sons and daughters”. The presence of the word “daughters” especially seems to suggest a biological connection, as daughters are never mentioned (as far as I can recall) as highlights of a future family tree / nation, much less repeatedly and generically for each of the forefathers. One would assume that this was an actual son.
2) Also I would like to point out that the author specifically uses the Hebrew words for “family line” when they start the genealogy. They say, “This is the account of Shem’s family line.”. This does not sound like an account of nations. The fact that someone is 35 is a biological fact, and this suggests that the begetting that took place is also biological.
3) The other question I would ask is, in which sense is someone 35 when indirectly beget someone many years in the future? It seems to me that this is a biological fact – they are 35 years old, and begat a direct child. Otherwise, why give this 35? Read Tom’s link from Reasons.org . I realize that the link says the ages *may* be like the death years which indicate that the people lived a nice full life beyond 100, even though the link itself acknowledges that there is scant if any precedent for this in the Bible and it’s mere speculation!
So I think it is fair to say that after considering the above arguments, there is absolutely no reason to say someone is 35 years old when they “begat” someone hundreds of years later, — save for one: believing Genesis to be the true word of God, and not ever changing your position. There is of course a CHANCE ancient people really did throw out numbers like 35, who knows. But let’s invoke my principle: are you biased towards a position? If we relax our standards here to accomodate your position, why not relax them elsewhere, like the arguments for God’s trinity? It is a slippery slope. If you are able to play the “maybe” wildcard, anything is possible. Maybe God didn’t REALLY give the law to Moses, but ancient people thought he did in some non literal way.
I am biased! And I will be biased. I just think we should have a consistent method for evaluating evidence and be able to explain what our thinking progression was. And be open to challenging our biases based on better evidence and arguments! What do I mean by better? By our own approach and standards that we have stated beforehand!
I am saying we should jettison double standards or at the very least admit them!
Greg,
I am saying, people should remove the double standards, and you then they will find common ground with one another.
But you’re wrong about this.
First, I pointed out that there is already ‘common ground’ between my beliefs and others’ beliefs. That’s where you’ve gone wrong. You’re painting the religious position as “I’m right, and I’m an atheist about every other religion’s God”. Now, not everyone will agree with me – I speak for myself here, of course – but I’m saying that this is flatly untrue. It’s untrue with Christianity with respect to Judaism and arguably (from a Catholic perspective, more certainly) Islam, the God of Aristotle, etc. Really, you bring up William Lane Craig. The fact that WLC is a Christian, one of Craig’s central arguments is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and Kalam was an argument given by a muslim should give you pause on this point.
Second, you’re suggesting that everyone has double standards in play when considering these questions. But again, that’s not true. And removing the double standards may not lead the direction you think it does (none of these religions have validity, and they lack it in equal amounts) but in the opposite direction (all of these religions have more validity than I thought, even if some have more than others.) I don’t need to reject all muslim claims to remain a Christian. And also, there are atheist double standards as well. (See the historical swap from ‘the universe is eternal’ to what we have now.)
Greg,
Regarding the fatal flaws you mentioned, I am not a scholar of ancient Hebrew, but let me just note a few things:
1. Is the word “other” actually contained in the Hebrew in Gen. 5? I don’t think it’s actually there. This is an interpretive decision.
2. Actually, the phrase “family line” is not included in any of the genealogies in Genesis. The word used throughout Genesis is “generations” and is the same word used to describe the “generations of the heavens and the earth” in Ge. 2:4 (the Hebrew word is even related to “yalad = begat”). So it would be tough to argue that “generations” has some specific, direct biological meaning such that it’s absence in Gen. 5 implies that Gen. 5 cannot possibly be talking about family lines. Indeed, as we’ve said, there are other places where genealogies are clearly telescopes which do not use the word “generations”
3. I didn’t make any reference to “death years”. I only suggested that at age 35, X did biologically have a son who went onto to sire some dynasty. It would be like saying, “When King George was 35, he sired the house of Charles.”
As I said, these are only off-the-cuff answers, and I am sure there are better ones elsewhere. But I think they at least render my suggestion plausible. I would say that this is often the case in instances of apparent biblical contradictions. We don’t necessarily know for certain the right answer, but have several plausible options. I also fully agree that the reason we don’t conclude the Bible is in error is because of our prior commitment of Christ. As I said, biblical inerrancy tends to be inferential. It flows out of our belief in Christ.
In the same way, someone might present evidence to me that my wife is a Russian spy. They could show me photographs and signatures and all sorts of things. But I would reject this evidence based on my prior knowledge of my wife’s character, which may not be available to someone who is not married to her. And I would still be completely rational in doing so!
Speaking personally, I always fully acknowledge that I have a Christian bias when I look at anything (see some of the essays on my website if you doubt that this is my modus operandi!). I take a very similar view to William Lane Craig here which is that belief in God is properly basic and that Christianity is a fundamental belief akin to a presupposition. But, as Steve pointed out, this goes both ways. We all have presuppositions. We can’t live or work or eat without them. The question isn’t whether to have presuppositions, but which presuppositions you have.
It’s also important to keep separate beliefs from within a Christian or inerrantist perspective from outside of such a perspective. I constantly hold my beliefs up to the lens of Scripture and examine them. And I’m sure that many of my beliefs are wrong. This is why I hold to the Protestant slogan of sempre reformanda = always reforming. There ought to be no “sacred cows” in our doctrine. We need to constantly, in prayer and seeking God’s help, seek to conform our beliefs to what the Bible teaches. But this is very different from what I would ask a non-Christian to do. The only question a non-Christian needs to ask is: who is Jesus? Is he your Lord? Is He your Savior? Does he call you to submit to himself? I would say that questions even as basic as the deity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity need to be considered only in light of a personal response to Jesus. It’s silly to put Jesus off with speculations about the Trinity when you have no real interest in following him in the first place! Once someone has wrestled with the person of Jesus and is committed to following him, then we can talk about the Trinity.
-Neil
Neil,
I have some questions of my own. Let’s look at these two lines in isolation.
When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father[b] of Enosh. 7 After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.
9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 10 After he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Altogether, Enosh lived a total of 905 years, and then he died.
Are you saying that ‘Seth’ isn’t just the name of a person, but of a dynasty too? So that, say… we have the Dynasty of Seth which lasts an indeterminate amount of time, and we have Seth himself who is credited with starting what would eventually become the Enosh Dynasty?
Just walk me through how you’d interpret these two lines.
Crude,
First, I want to make sure that I don’t confuse people. I’m honestly not sure how to interpret the genealogies in Gen. 5 and 7. Maybe they’re perfectly literal. Maybe they are literary devices of the kind common in contemporaneous ANE literature. Maybe they had some meaning that was clear to the original readers, but has since been obscured. Greg just asked me to show how a potentially literal interpretation could still allow for a local flood happening before 2100 B.C. and I tried to provide one. If push came to shove, I would probably generally agree with the interpretation I’m giving, but I really am not certain.
That being said, I think Seth and Enosh (like David or Israel) could refer both to historic individuals and to their lines. As to the numbers, I think they could be read as literal numbers of years that each person lived. So the historic person Seth had a son at age 105 and lived a total of 912 years. Of course, this would be as incredible to the ancient Israelites as it is today. But I think it’s possible (and would be miraculous). Another possibility is that the years themselves refer to the longevity of the dynasty, not the person. As I said, I’m not certain myself and I tend to avoid making categorical statements since the longevity of these men is not clarified anywhere in the rest of Scripture, as far as I know. Also, it’s worth nothing that both the Septuagint and the Samaritan versions do differ in these numbers so clearly something was uncertain, even to ancient readers.
-Neil
i’ve just posted the next item in the queue–a question Neil raised, which I think will lead to some lively discussion on a different topic: Why should we care whether we believe the truth?
Neil,
I didn’t mean to put too much of a burden on you – I know you were only offering up a possible way to read those lines. I just was asking how, under your idea, they should be read. I’m interested in the view.
For my own part, I don’t really see much reason to be concerned over the readings either way since I’m personally not married to a hyper literal reading of Genesis, nor in the claim that Genesis is inerrant on these matters. On the flipside, I don’t believe Genesis 1-11 is utter myth either. But hey, that’s me.
Here is a local flood hypothesis that I found to be quite interesting.
Tom, what are you talking about?