I posted a question that got several different answers.?

Question

When God speaks to us through the Bible, don't you think He's going to speak to us in language we can understand? Take Genesis chapter 1, and the six days of Creation. Even though God is not bound by time, but transends it, when refering to time, don't you think He's going to use language we understand? God said "Evening and morning, the first day". How can someone look at that and say it means evening and morning, the first million years? I think God says what He means and means what He says. If God didn't mean a literal 24 hour day, I'm sure He could have found another way of saying it.

God transends time, but as humans, we're bound by the time space continuum. He put the language into terms we could understand. Creation was in six, 24 hour days.

Can anyone disagree logically without saying go to www.blahblahblah.com, or denegrating the Bible as myth? Would like some serious answers.

EmmaPeel and Quella Bella.........2 Peter 3:8 isn't talking about the Creation, but is pointing out the fact that God is outside of time.

Patrone07............when you look at words, you have to look at the syntex range. "Day", as in The Day of the Lord, is an undefined period. But anywhere in the OT wher day is modified by the words "evening and morning" or by a number, such as 1st day or 2nd, it is always a 24 hr day.

Answer 1

Theo.........you called me in the middle of dinner. But it is a good question. Wait to you see the answers you get from the Atheists. They won't be able to explain it logically, so they'll just denigrate the whole Bible as myth or allegory or fairy tales. And some of the Christians will say that God's time is not our time. True, God's time is not our time, but God was speaking to us in terms we would understand.

WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO FOR GOD TO SPEAK TO US IN LANGUAGE WE COULDN'T UNDERSTAND THE MEANING.

I know that wouldn't make sense to the Atheist, but I hope the Christians realize what I'm saying.

Answer 2

First, you are not reading the Torah,as the Hebrew meaning is not the same as the English translation of a translation of a translation, etc., that you are reading.
Time and statements reagrding time are not specific in the Hebrew.
Some are to be taken literally and others are figuratively.

"God" speaks to the people to whom he delivered his message and through whom he delivered his message in the language of those people.
To date, no "god" has designated an English speaking prophet, only Jewish, Arabic and some others from around that same region (accordin the Torah, Pslams, prophetic writings of the Jews, the "New Testament" of the Christians and the Holy Qur'an of the Muslims.)

There could not have been and evening and a morning of the first two days as god did not create the sun and the moon, which would have , according to the understanding of the Jews, designated such until the third day.

If all things come from god and are of the will of god, then the knowledge that mankind possesses is from god( as the same is taught in the Torah, the New Testament and the Holy Qur'an).
Why would god allow mankind knowledge that directly contradicts his revelations, or is your god so perverse and cruel that he has given and gifted humankind with misleading information, evidence and understanding just to torment them and lead many astray.
Wouldn't that be the work of a deliberately evil god?
If god is evil, it can not be god by the definition of the same(i.e., all powerful, all just, all truthful, all good, all loving, etc., super being).

If one is going to post such an "assumption" as you have posted, it would be in that one's best interest to have actaully studied the perteneint materials prior to doing so.
One might also wish to carefully consider the ramifications and implications of one's question utilizing logic and reasoning rather than just emotions.

May it all be well with you.

Answer 3

Sure, I don't have a problem with looking at this hypothetically.

The Bible was not written until many, many years after the creation story was first told. There is a concept in learning theory called integration, which says that as people absorb information, they store it into categories that they have already formed.

Even if God actually told someone the creation story, the person who heard it would need to put into a context he/she could understand. Everyone who heard it would then do the same. Even if everyone were trying to be as faithful to the story as they possibly could be, over the generations the story would inevitably change.

Answer 4

First, referring to the Bible as myth is not "denegrating" it. Read some Joseph Campbell, my friend. Myth and metaphor are *extremely* powerful modes of text ... *FAR* more powerful than literalism. Myth and metaphor can survive through the ages, and speak deep Truth to people across centuries, language barriers, nationalities, and even economic differences. Literalism *diminishes* scripture.

But as to the time periods in Genesis, I agree with you completely that God speaks to us in language we can understand. But in 2nd-century B.C. (which is when the oldest copies of the Pentateuch are dated), what language was that? The scriptures of that time were in Hebrew or Greek and the "language that people could understand" AT THAT TIME.

Answer 5

Genesis 1:1 is the original creation without any time constraints. Some period of time, not specified, elapses until a cataclysmic event renders the earth formless and empty in 1:2. The proceeding 6 days of creative events is a re-creation and is not related to the age of the earth in any way.

Answer 6

God DIDN'T say 24 hour day. The word used in Hebrew that got translated as day actually means "period of time".

The Bible is not a science book, God says in the Bible stuff about our relationship with Him and with ourselves, that's what the Genesis is all about, and that's what we're supposed to understand (that's also what theologists always understood before the theory of evolution settled and gotta lot of fundies afraid of it and a lot of atheists trying in a useless way justify their beliefs).

God did use a language we could understand, the same way Jesus did when he told his stories "parabolas" in Portuguese, i don't know the name in English), they weren't literal stories, still they were about much more deep and meaningful things than taking it literally.

That's what i believe, at least

Paz de Cristo dude

Answer 7

Being as there's copious scientific evidence that the world took way longer than six days to form you really only have two choices. Accept that is a myth,no more valid in it's teachings than the myths about Baal,Zeus, or any other religion.Or you can assume that God didn't actually mean days,which is the tact many theologians took when it became clear that science clearly debunked the Bible.

AD

Answer 8

What about where it says that a day is but a thousand years to God? Also, did you know the creation story was written when the Jews were captive in Babylon in 500 BCE? It was done to compete with the Zoroastrian creation story and is based on an ancient Mesopotamian story.

Answer 9

1. Errrr... Different Answers are *Not* unusual, of course...
2. We *do* understand Big Bang, the ToE and Old Earth... *If* there was a 'God', He/She/It *could have been* an honest and forthright one, not obtuse and lying. ... These 'Gods' have done more to retard science and understanding than any other factor in history...

So... "YES", I disagree emphatically and vociferously without referring to www.blahblahblah.com or denegrating the Bible as myth.

Answer 10

You'll get several different answers when you post a question here.

God may very well be dwelling in a different space,time continuum where six days is like six billion years each day but then again God is God and I would suppose that if he wanted to create it in six twenty-four hour days he could.