Genesis, creation and Moses?

Question

Some people believe God created man. Some even believe in the Garden of Eden and how everything was created in just 6 days.

However, Genesis was written by Moses. Moses was only a prince who was educated in Egypt. As such, he was no archaeologist or bio chemist.

If that is the case, how accurate can his version of the origin of life and the world be?

Had he acquired his knowledge through research and discovery, or had he travelled back through time to witness for himself this process, what he had written would be more credible.

Why is it some people still believe in creation? How realiable can Genesis be, especially if it is from someone who did not know much about the bio chemistry of life? Why is it some people still want to cling on to something that may not have any basis? Why are they so insistent? Had Moses did his research, it would have been a different matter.

Answer 1

Genesis was not written by Moses. The First Book of the Bible is an acount of the beginings of the earth and the origins of mankind.
Mostly likely it is based upon earlier mythology, other cultural traditions prior to what has become known as the Judeo- Christian tradition.
The Pentauch - the five books of Moses are merely a reference point, not an acknowledge of Moses's specific role in documenting these mythological events and creation stories.

Answer 2

If you read deeper into the bible, you'll see that the Bible reveals that the earth is actually older than the creation of man, as told in Genesis 1. If you read the discription of Lucifer in one of Moses books, it talks about how he and the Angels walked about the Earth before their Fall and before the creation of man. The bible seems to tell of a world long before the Creation of Man. After the fall of the Angels, it says God made the world formless and void. Then after an accusation made by Lucifer, God created Man, but first setting Earth back to it's orginal state (as described in Genesis 1).

Do the research and make the connections. Try getting the original language of the BIble.

Remember if God wrote the Bible himself, the it would be so adorned that it would be locked up and worshiped rather than read....

Answer 3

Moses was a Prophet of GOD. God revealed this information to Moses and Moses wrote it down by divine inspiration.

God said it. God does not lie.

It is a matter of faith. The fossil record. carbon dating, radioactive decay, and salinity of the seas. start with assumptions more hypothetical than Divine creation.

The whole boils down to this. Some men do not want there to be a GOD who will one day judge thier actions by HIS laws. They placate their conscience by deluding themselves there is no GOD. NO GOD. NO judgment. Then they run into the sticky wicket of having to grasp for another explanation. for creation. Thus rears the ugly head of Evolution . They cling to it like a religion.

But I must emphasize that EVOLUTION is a THEORY not a FACT. Yet they try to elevate it to a fact and teach it as fact.. when in reality they cannot demonstrate it ever happened nor can they do it time and again. That is the definiton of a fact.
A fact is a natural occurance that can be demonstrated time after time.

Answer 4

Those of us who believe in God believe that it was Him who gave the knowledge to Moses. Does the fact that it sounds incredible make it more likely? After all, if you really wanted to 'make up' a religion you would make it sound credible, surely. I believe in the 6 days of creation and though I'm not a scientist at all, I have read lots about the debate, and am not convinced that science can disprove it. In the final event it hardly matters how it all started. What is important is our response to the claims of Jesus.

Answer 5

No body has seen the creation of world by God,even adam and eve were created later only.The creation of world was revealed to Moses by God.These were explained by Jesus and other prophets.It is left up to you believe in them.Our recoded history is for less than 1000 years.
Incidentally everything is not self learned.How the calf searches for milk immediately after birth.How human babies cry and drink mothers milk?Some knowledge is inherited and comes in bourn.We only expand it.The inheritted intelligence is called "God's Gift".So Moses'knowledge might have been in bourn and got from GOD.

Answer 6

I believe that the Bible is part history, part allegory, part fable. The seven days story of Creation was created to explain to peasants complex nuclear physics that we in the current age are only beginning to understand. Evolution, the Big Bang, etc., do not mean that God does not exist, nor does the existance of God preclude evolution or the Big Bang. They can co-exist. I personally believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth, but did it in the way that modern science explains it, not in the way the Bible does.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Moses was a son of Amram and his wife, Jochebed, a Levite. Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the desert, and received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai around 1445 BCE. The Torah contains the life story of Moses and his people until his death at the age of 120 years.

I do not believe MOSES actually caused the Ten Plagues of Egypt that are related in the book of Exodus, rather that he had some visionary pre-sight of events that were to come - either by divination, by dreams, by voices he heard, by Astrology or by logical deduction of environmental cause-and-effect. We may be sure that MOSES worked with an unusually focused sense of inner conviction. He marched into the hostile country of Egypt, unsupported by an army, bringing only his staff and his faith in ‘Adonai’ (YAHWEH). His mission was clear - to bring the Israelite descendants out of Egypt, where they had lived as slaves for over 100 years

What follows thereafter in the Bible, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, afflicted even the Theban royalty. History has long since consigned the Exodus story of the plagues to legend, for it has long been considered an absurd idea that MOSES could have brought such ruination upon Egypt, as the Bible reports, merely by waving his staff. This narrow view has contributed to the mythification of MOSES, who has been demoted thus from key historical figure to legendary anomaly, mythical hero, religious icon, anything but man.

The traditional Christian view implies that the Bible is unique among texts in its truthful nature (lack of falsehood), while simultaneously implying that truth is meaningful only in living application through a personal relationship to God - attempting to adhere to a static set of moral laws is believed to lead to death (see, e.g., Romans 7). The traditional Christian believes one arrives at this view by "answering the call of God," who speaks to all mankind through revelation, where revelation is never contradictory and consists of both the Bible and experience gained through life. When faced with an ethical dilemma in Moses's writings, a traditional Christian might employ critical examination of available historical context, critical examination of how the writing should be translated, and critical examination of his or her understanding of God's nature to determine what the passage means, all the while believing the Bible contains no falsehood.

In the time of moses, Scientific study was reserved to the stars, no libraries to research anything let alone, explaining the bio chemestry of life, which also could be a part of a pattern created by a God we do not yet understand.

People still believe in creation for the same reason science dosen't, Faith that we are right.

Judism, Catholisim, Christianity, and Islam all don't put much empasis on bio-chemestry, archaeology, or research.

Just the fact that God told him is reason enough.

Answer 7

the stories in genesis were ancient accounts by the time they were written in genesis. they may be older than writing itself, passed down orally. the flood story was recorded in the bablonian epic of gilgamesh, which predates the book of genesis. moses got a pagan education in egypt. he knew about the old accounts. the creation is one of these. why else would the one god call itself we in the creation account? let us make man in our image.
the stories in the first part of genesis were already common, near eastern mythology when genesis was written.

Answer 8

I was glad to see that you posted this under 'mythology & folklore' because that is certainly where it belongs (well done)!!
Amazing answers also!
"How reliable can Genesis be"? Just as reliable as the rest of the myths BS!
But nice try, keep at it you never know you may one day get an answer that wont contain qoutes from the 'holy books' given as concrete proof!!
Then again pigs may fly??

Answer 9

Remember the bible was not fax to use from heaven. Man wrote it and rewrote over and over. They were trying to explain something they had no clue about. I believe that life evolved and that the great powers made us. To believe in one dose not mean you cannot believe in the other

Answer 10

Not everyone who believes that the Bible is the inspired Word of God believes that Moses wrote it. That is mostly a belief among certain Jews. Before stating beliefs closer to my own, let me just say that none of us can prove them wrong, and God is big enough (from a Judeo-Christian view) to enable Moses to write it. Just a thought.

There are two creation stories in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, each used by the Holy Spirit to reveal things to us about God as Creator, the original goodness of humankind, the effects of sin, and part of God's plan to help fallen humankind.

In the first creation story, the earth is prepared before man and woman are created. In the second one, (Ch 2) Adam is created first, then the plants and animals, then Eve from his rib. That's just one difference. There are quite a few.

The first creation story is the younger of the two and is called the Eloist (not sure about that spelling; sorry) Tradition, because it was a liturgical song/poem used (written) much later than Moses' time.

The older story is part of what scholars call the Yahwist Tradition, and it is the one with Adam and Eve.

Way back in the day, the oral tradition was strong and man was better able to pass things down accurately. No tv's, radios, billboards, industrial machinery, etc. Many could not even read, so the oral tradition then was different than it is now. Some of what was accurately passed down (facts, if you will) was put in a form of liturature familiar to the inspired author(s) so that the religious message was communicated.

The purpose of scripture is to communicate religious truth -- not historical or scientific facts. Can some of that be found? Certainly. There are a group of books in the Bible dubbed, "historical," but their purpose, too, is to communicate religious truth.

Some people believe in six days of creation as literal. Can't prove them right or wrong. Science can only offer different theories. Some Christians consider that in that first creation story the sun and moon are not even created until a few days into the process, so a "day" can be a period of time different from the measurement we are using today -- even thousands/million of years.

Either way, the religious message is the same -- God created everything and created it good, and there is something called the "rest of God" even though God does not need to "rest." It has to do with what God knew he would do later to bless mankind with a 7th's day rest (which modern science confirms is important for our health) and the future "rest" of heaven that he has created for those who will enter into a love relationship with Him.

Another thing to consider is that not all Christians accept it as literal. Some Christians believe that the Holy Spirit can inspire a poetic type of literature (1st creation story) with a future purpose of communicating to mankind something about His nature and plan. If He's God, then that has to at least be possible, from a believer's point of veiw. Taken as religious literature (in context), the stories are compatible and give us a better understanding of what God is saying. If you try to read scripture like a newspaper (out of context) then the stories seem to compete with each other.

As for the rest of your questions, "Why is it that some people still believe in Creation? How realiable . . . Why are they so insistent? . . . " I'll take a stab at explaining.

1. Based on the revelations some of the "saints" of the past (A.D.) said they had that included visions of Adam and/or Eve, people believed because their lives were so filled with evidence of holiness (charity, miracles, etc.). That's one possible reason.

2. People look around at the beauty, order, resilience, and wonder of the created things they see. It is more reasonable to believe that this order and beauty was created by something intelligent, then to believe that it was not -- that it was by accident. Reason is not the opposite of faith for Christians; it is a gift from God and a starting point. Faith has to do with believing that God is as Good and Trustable as He has presented Himself, and so it (faith) builds on reason. People accept the creation stories as liturature inspired by the Holy Spirit because the religious truth communicated through them is reasonable to believe.

3. Christians believe because when they recieve the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gives them a "witness" in their spirit. There's often an understanding of the big picture -- Old Covenant and New -- of God's plan of salvation. That understanding helps them to see how all of the diverse parts of scripture (many books, many types of literature) fit together to form a uniform whole. That vision of how something a bunch of different people wrote over a few thousand years (maybe 6,000) fits to make a whole speaks to them of a greater truth -- that the Holy Spirit has been writing it through them, so the Author is the same even when the human authors change.

4. The biggest reason some Christians believe is that they live in the ongoing revelation of God's love after they repent of their sins, accept Jesus Christ, receive the Holy Spirit, and have been joined to Christ's Body, the Church. They hear God speaking to them in their consciences, through inspriation during their prayer time, through the prophetic gifts, and by the way they recognize the workings of God in their everyday lives.

5. The thing about scripture reading is this -- most people who are not practicing Chirstians can read it and get it at a literature level -- like reading any book. But Christians of every denomination (and "non-denomination") who accept Christ as Lord and ask for the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit," report receiving a hunger for reading scripture, and a totally different experience of it. It "comes alive" for them instead of seeming like old writtings or something difficulty to get into. This "coming alive" is called the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is such a universal experience among all of them, that they forget sometimes what reading and understanding scripture was like "before." Likewise, people who have not converted (esp. those not open to it because they are not ready to give up things they know are sinful in their lives) don't have that grace, so they think Christians are crazy/radical/unreasonable.

Hope this helps more than it confuses. Peace.