Explain this.

[dan]

The Bible says in Genesis 1:16, that…‘God created two lights, the greater light the Sun, to rule the day, and the lesser light the Moon, to rule the night. The actual translation, if you go to the Hebrew text, it is ‘lamps’…‘Lamps having lights of its own.’
If you read both the Verses – Genesis 1:16 and 17 it says…‘And Almighty God placed them in the firmament, to give light to the earth....’ Indicating, that Sun and the Moon have its own light - which is in contradiction with established scientific knowledge that we have. Today we come to know that the Moon is a reflected light, and not its own light.

It's funny when non-religious people think they understand Biblical Hebrew or the BIble.

Everyone else will give you dadgy answers about having faith and stuff like that, but being a long time student of Hebrew and the Old Testament, I'll tell you the truth.

Ancient Hebrew became a dead language a long, long time ago. What we know today as modern Hebrew is actually Hebrew with a skeletal system of Arabic, created by a man named Eleazar Ben Yehuda in the late 19th Century. He essentially resurrected Hebrew. Prior to him it was only read in prayer books and scriptures, like Latin. Just like Latin, Hebrew was not completely understood. Much of what we understand today is guesswork.

In the original Old Testament Hebrew we only know what a word means because it appears several times in certain contexts, giving us a clue as to its meaning. Several words only appear once, and we have absolutely no way of knowing with 100% confidence what they mean. The interesting thing is that the same word is often given many different translations. THe word for "thousand" in Hebrew appears many times translated as "thousand," "two thousand," "ten thousand" and other varitations, despite being the exact same word. We know they should mean different things because of the contexts in which they are found. Those who say the Bible is exactly and 100% infallible syllable for syllable are ludicrous. There is a verse in Samuel that is often translated "And Saul reigned one year. When Saul had reigned two years..." What the Hebrew reads actually says "And Saul was a year old, and Saul reigned for two years..." We have no clue what the scribe was trying to say, but we guess.

Your interpretation is meaningless, because that word can mean anything from sunlight to the light of ones face or the light of prosperity. The same meaning cannot be transfered literally to every example of its occurance.

At the same time, you cannot expect a scribe or a prophet to always use the perfect words, because revelation does not often come as written words, but as thoughts and ideas then transfered to paper by the person. There is a certain amount of subjectivity to thinking a thought and transfering it to the written word.

I know you think you're clever, but anyone with more than a rudimentary understanding of the Bible and the languages behind it is not impressed. You'll have to try harder than that if you really want to feel like you know anything about religion.

 

[A4B4]

In other words, maybe if the Bible told us the moon was merely a reflection of the sun, people from the times before the scientific proof may have disbelieved because of that.

Now, I'm not saying that the moon does produce its own light; I'm just saying God knows best.

 

[Bishka]

In other words, maybe if the Bible told us the moon was merely a reflection of the sun, people from the times before the scientific proof may have disbelieved because of that.

Now, I'm not saying that the moon does produce its own light; I'm just saying God knows best.

Hey there...that's an idea.

 

[Mike182]

In other words, maybe if the Bible told us the moon was merely a reflection of the sun, people from the times before the scientific proof may have disbelieved because of that.

Now, I'm not saying that the moon does produce its own light; I'm just saying God knows best.

i could easily agree with such an interpritation, one could argue that the bible was written for specific audiences, and we are not that exact audience, ergo it's tue meaning and purpose is lost on us

 

[dan]

The Bible was inspired of God butphysically written down by humans, and humans don't know everything. If you have a problem with this "light" stuff then it might interest you to know that the first Christians also believed in the pheonix, a bird that lived five hundred years and was reborn after it died. We think now that that's pretty dumb, but why do people expect religious folk to have a better understanding of nature than the scientists of the time period they live in?

 

[wmam]

The Scriptures where written by Hebrews, for Hebrews and about Hebrews.

 

[spont76]

That's what you think. And I second Melody's words.

You think religion isn't knowledge? Well, that's everybody's own opinion. In religion I find so much knowledge.

"If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference?"
-Richard Dawkins

So what exactly is this great knowledge that comes from religion?

 

[makra]

Did you read Gen. 1:3? "And God said , Let there be light: and there was light." Light--before he created the Sun and moon--Light that seperated the darkness from the light! This was the first day--sun and moon on the fourth day.

 

[spont76]

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
- Ellen DeGeneres

 

[Mike182]

I disagree Mike182. Fobbing off the allegory AS reality is, in my estimation, folly.

sorry, maybe i didn't explain very well - i assume you know what an allegorical story is, the story is not true, but it has a message behind it, i believe that the author of Genesis wrote a story that symbolises a truth beyond words - i do not claim it to be reality

 

[Halcyon]

The Bible says in Genesis 1:16, that…‘God created two lights, the greater light the Sun, to rule the day, and the lesser light the Moon, to rule the night. The actual translation, if you go to the Hebrew text, it is ‘lamps’…‘Lamps having lights of its own.’
If you read both the Verses – Genesis 1:16 and 17 it says…‘And Almighty God placed them in the firmament, to give light to the earth....’ Indicating, that Sun and the Moon have its own light - which is in contradiction with established scientific knowledge that we have. Today we come to know that the Moon is a reflected light, and not its own light.

Its a creation myth, every ancient culture had one.

All they had to go on was observation of their environment, and imagination to interpret what they saw.
The cultures at the time ranged from animist through polytheistic to henotheistic, people saw spirituality everywhere, science did not exist.

The creation myth is the simplest of religious writings and is common to all cultures, it is man's attempt at understanding the world around him. There is nothing particularily special about the two different creation myths in Genesis, in fact as far as creation myths go they are pretty dull and unimaginative
Modern men who take them as literal truth need psychological help, IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth

 

[dan]

"If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference?"
-Richard Dawkins

So what exactly is this great knowledge that comes from religion?

The greatest thinkers, inventors, philosophers and scientists were all religious folk. Without religion those scientists wouldn't have had the funding, inspiration or means to do what they did. You're familiar with Bach, the composer, correct? His work is pretty important. He was commissioned by his church to do a piece every week for them. Most of his most important stuff comes from that commission. Einstein always believed in God. The inventor of the television was Mormon. Colombus said he felt he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Michealangelo was commissioned by the church. Most of the greatest artwork of all time is religious in nature. Religion has also committed the greatest atrocities of all time, but not true religion.

Only within the last fifty years or so has it become hip to doubt religion and God, so your question would have to throw out all the innovation and thinking from before that time-period to remain valid, and without all that knowledge you know where you hipsters are? Nowhere.

 

[dan]

Its a creation myth, every ancient culture had one.

All they had to go on was observation of their environment, and imagination to interpret what they saw.
The cultures at the time ranged from animist through polytheistic to henotheistic, people saw spirituality everywhere, science did not exist.

The creation myth is the simplest of religious writings and is common to all cultures, it is man's attempt at understanding the world around him. There is nothing particularily special about the two different creation myths in Genesis, in fact as far as creation myths go they are pretty dull and unimaginative
Modern men who take them as literal truth need psychological help, IMO.

So why did cultures from South America, the Pacific Islands, the Near East, Asia, Africa and northern Europe all come up with the same doctrines, stories and practices without ever having interacted with each other? You know what a ziggurat is, don't you? Did you know that cultures from the Pacific Islands, South and Central America and Mesopotamia all used Ziggurats with the exact same designs and functions thousands of years before they even became aware of each other?

Did you know that there are flood stories with the same characters and causes (including language confusion and a tower) from those same three regions thousands of years before they knew of each others existence?

Did you know that people who accept what other people tell them as truth without investigating evidence for themselves need psychological help?

 

[sparc872]

I fully understand both viewpoints here. Some of you say that it cannot be true because it is contradictory to our gained knowledge. Others say that it is true, but not meant to be taken literally.

My problem with the whole issue lies in the question of where do we stop. We write off the creation stories as allegory. We write off the story of Noah and his ark as allegory. How far do we take it? The Bible appears to me like it was meant to be a very historical document of that people. It appears to me that they were writing down the world as they saw what happened in it. They described the history of their kings, of their tribes, they attributed wins and losses in battle to the decisions of God. They said that God was hardening Pharoes heart, that God had spoken to Moses in the mountains. That is perfectly fine with me. I can believe that those parts of the story were attempts to explain the world. It is when someone tells me that certain parts were allegorical just because it contradicts science while maintaining that other parts should be taken as truth. What if Jesus was meant simply to be a story explaining how we should live, with love in our hearts, rather than as an absolute truth?

Someone above stated that every culture has had a creation story, some way of explaining where they came from. Why should I believe that God created man when heaps of evidence point away from that, not to mention that the only thing in the Bible written about the issue is supposedly allegorical? Why should I place my faith more into the Judeo-Christian worldview over the Hopi indian creation story, or that of one of the tribes in Africa. Why the Christian view on creation over that of the ancient Greeks? To me, it is all just that, a creation story. They needed to describe how we came to be, and their imagination ran wild. They needed an authority greater than the earthly leaders to keep everyone in check, so God was invented. It is a great story, but it is ultimately a story that has lost its necessity. It is ancient history and we are just prolonging its agonizingly slow death by letting it persist in our culture to this day.

 

[sparc872]

So why did cultures from South America, the Pacific Islands, the Near East, Asia, Africa and northern Europe all come up with the same doctrines, stories and practices without ever having interacted with each other? You know what a ziggurat is, don't you? Did you know that cultures from the Pacific Islands, South and Central America and Mesopotamia all used Ziggurats with the exact same designs and functions thousands of years before they even became aware of each other?

Did you know that there are flood stories with the same characters and causes (including language confusion and a tower) from those same three regions thousands of years before they knew of each others existence?

Did you know that people who accept what other people tell them as truth without investigating evidence for themselves need psychological help?

Stories of creation were very dear to the ancient minds. Are you telling me that it was not possible that the very earliest of men didn't come up with a story and then through migration it spread? Nearly every culture wears clothing and has for quite sometime now. The concept obviously originated somewhere, probably from a group of people who were freezing to death. Should we attribute the fact that cultures worldwide wear clothing to God? Absolutely not. Or how about the bow and arrow or spear. All of these items had some origination, some mind constructed them and their use spread. Culture is a wonderful thing, it has the ability to spread and stay relatively the same through the use of the spoken language and observing the actions of previous generations.


Nearly every culture in the world has some form of belief in dragons. Jungle tribes in South America do, the Chinese and south pacific people do, the Europeans do. So what? Were dragons ever real? I highly doubt it, but the myth had to have its origins somewhere and I am more than willing to bet it was through the spread of the human population that the myth grew into such a highly recognized symbol the world over.

 

[dan]

The problem is that modern science says these cultures absolutely never had contact with each other. The Pacific Islands were inhabited by South America (Kon Tiki shows this but the Book of Mormon said this over 100 years earlier), but how did the ziggurats get from Meopotamia to the New World 2,000 years before anyone ever knew it was there. How did an ancient Hebrew explain to the Aztecs the story of Babel, the confounding of languages and a great flood?

In addition, the practices all began around the same time periods. How did an Assyrian tell a Mayan about how to build Ziggurats? That these cultures transmitted these practices is a physical impossibility.

 

[Mike182]

and perhaps beyond credulity and their own primitive understanding. Utilizing the thinking you are promoting one could very well make a plate of macaroni into a gazelle.

In essence, I am meaning the individual can "read into" a given article whatever they wish. IF the allegory in question bears no semblance to the reality it is trying to depict, then it is neither very good allegory, nor is it especially wise and any truth found therein is hopelessly muddied as a result. Garbage in; Garbage out.


I agree and I never said you did, however, many WILL tell me that The Bible is the literal word of God and that is whom I was really addressing. Sorry to ruffle your feathers.

thanks

In the articles section, i did a piece on Genesis 1 and how if assumed to be allegorical, resembles Big Bang theory and Evolution - my idea is better explained in there - but i am fully aware of the criticisms, and do not use Genesis arguments to try and sway non-believers (heck, i don't use any arguments to sway anyone!)

i can dig the article out if you're interested

 

[Halcyon]

So why did cultures from South America, the Pacific Islands, the Near East, Asia, Africa and northern Europe all come up with the same doctrines, stories and practices without ever having interacted with each other? You know what a ziggurat is, don't you? Did you know that cultures from the Pacific Islands, South and Central America and Mesopotamia all used Ziggurats with the exact same designs and functions thousands of years before they even became aware of each other?

Did you know that there are flood stories with the same characters and causes (including language confusion and a tower) from those same three regions thousands of years before they knew of each others existence?

Sources dan, cite sources when you make claims like this.

Ziggurat, a type of Mesopotamian step pyramid. Similar to but different in design and purpose from the step pyramids of South and Central American cultures.

Did you know that they have found traces of tobacco in ancient Egyption mummies which suggests trade between the old and new world in ancient times?
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf111/sf111p01.htm

The idea of ancient cultures trading commodities and ideas is not new to me, and is not evidence of a flood or a tower of babel.

Did you know that people who accept what other people tell them as truth without investigating evidence for themselves need psychological help?

"Hello," said the pot to the kettle, "You're black."

 

[dan]

Ziggurat, a type of Mesopotamian step pyramid. Similar to but different in design and purpose from the step pyramids of South and Central American cultures.

They were both temples, with the structure on top serving as the link between God and man. As you ascend you get closer to God, and in the structure you commune with him. He descends to meet with your ascent. It was a vertical link between the worlds. They were also representative of the "mountain" of the primordial creative acts. All this is true of both Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican pyramids. THe Mesoamericans also made sacrifices in the temples atop the pyramids, but the difference is explained in the Book of Mormon.

Did you know that they have found traces of tobacco in ancient Egyption mummies which suggests trade between the old and new world in ancient times?
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf111/sf111p01.htm

The idea of ancient cultures trading commodities and ideas is not new to me, and is not evidence of a flood or a tower of babel.

Ha! I was hoping you'd have done your research and bring this up. You know all the people who try to push this idea of trade and stuff between old world and new prior to the Common Era are usually criticized for their ideas? You know why? Because they're all Mormon! You won't find an archeologist on the planet who likes that idea unless he's a Mormon. We have tons of evidence showing a very strong link betwen the Old and New World, but no one listens to us. It's funny what you see when you don't have the "Mormons are idiots" blinders on!

On the flood and the tower, by the way: in the sixteenth century a Spanish explorer wrote down in one of his books an ancient native american legend about a family that lived by a giant tower when the languages of all the earth were confused. The family then crossed a great ocean and started agaion in the Americas. Two hundred years later we find that story in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith, by the way, had no access to those books. We know that the Old World and the New have had contact for a long time, but we get a lot of flack for it. Thanks for showing what conclusions one can come up with if they're not already biased!

 

[dan]

I'll get those old journals out and get you the sources tomorrow.