And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
As you can see, the literal concept of day and night are seen from Evening and Morning. So as in your everyday life of morning and evening, you've been answered.
Sorry, but the idea this is "literal" is just your assumption. My everyday "day" has evening and morning, but this does not mean every where on earth, this would be the same thing. There are places that know 24 hours sunlight. Would you say these people are experiencing the same "day" after those 24 hours? My point, the day of Genesis has little to do with my own day, because my ow day starts with the sun and ends with the moon. Mrning is not just a mindless word. I know "morning" when I see the sun come up in my sky. I know evening when I see it go down. You want to tell me to pretend that my morning and evening can make sense without the sun and moon and rotating earth, and then just pretend that God was speaking of the same thing when he spoke of a completely different morning and evening than mine, ones without any sky, sun, moon, stars.
The funny thing is that in all this, you have actually convinced yourself that yours is the more realist interpretation (literal, for lack of a better word) than mine! In truth, yours is more of a projection than a literal reading.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Which seasons do you think God is talking about here? Which years? Figurative or literal?
All it says is that God made stars. He made them with the foreknowledge and providence that they would be useful to humans. Why should I doubt that God made stars and that he made them for the good of mankind?? I have no idea what point you were trying to make with this....
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Which seventh day did God sanctify? Was it a figurative Seventh day or a literal seventh day?
The days are not literal. I have no doubt about that, because my days consist in the earth's rotation on its axis with a face towards and away from the sun. Genesis' days clearly are not the same things I call days when I speak of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I see you conveniently, disregarded the part that describes these days as days that have nothing to do with the things that make our days when we humans speak of them.
Neither is the "order" of one day, the after 2nd day, then after third day etc etc. literal. There is a church father for whom those were simply different realms of existence in God's creation that are described. Just a poetic device of describing the truth that God fashioned all things deliberately and orderly, no more.
When the Bible says God "breathed" into Adam, I am sure you don't then assume that God has lungs and nostrils, do you? You understand it must be metaphorical.
How would an angel breathe into Adam? Angels are spirits. I don't need to speculate "what if God took on the form of a human body". How would a human body breathe life into another? I also know that the "breathe of life" breathed into Adam was more than oxygen, which is what your literalist interpretation wants to insist on. This "breathe" in Adam was something else, it made Adam a "living soul", something God never said of any other creature.
The Bible says, GOD breathed into Adam. If God had done something else, we would have been told. But the Bible says, GOD BREATHED INTO ADAM.
That is just silly, sorry KD. God is not a an animal and God does not "breathe". If you accept that the Bible is not 100% literal, why on earth decide on such a ridiculous reading. So if Jesus said the mustard seed was the smallest, IT WAS THE SMALLEST! If you are consistent, you should similarly type so. You basically deny even the concept of language itself, and the fact that it is in itself inherently symbolic.
Besides, the animals breathe just fine, dont they? They never had Divinity breathe into them.
What if God chose to breathe into Adam for Adam to live, but chose to command animals to live without having to breathe into them? What is that to you? Shall you tell God how to make life?
The fact is that if it was mere breathe God gave Adam, it would be identical to that we share with animals (and plants!). The point is, the fact that the scriptures make a point of telling us that GOD breathed life into Adam is SIGNIFICANT. What is that significance? Your literalist reading avoids all this and basically refuses to ponder on anything beyond the immediate words. That is a completely wrong way to read because you basically read as if you assume the Bible was written by a modern English-speaker from your own village, hence no need to understand any context or figures of speech at all.
When it tells us God walked in the garden in the evening, you don't assume God is a physical being, do you?
What if God choice to take up a physical being in order to talk with Adam just as he chose to take a physical body in order to save the descendants of Adam, what is it to you?
The fact is that God becoming incarnate happened ONCE. It was so special the Jews couldn't conceive of it. This is the ridiculousness of a literal reading, you are basically willing to conjure up a whole dogma of a previous Divine
incarnation just to maintain your current interpretation, just so you can keep your current understanding of it, and then you think yours is the more faithful approach...huh?
When it tells us God punished the snake, do you assume God confused a snake with Satan?
Why would God confuse the snake with Satan? What if God punished the snake for allowing the devil to possess it and use its body in order to be able to speak to Adam?
I am going to assume you are joking
You believe in a God who punishes creatures that have no free will for ''allowing"--never mind that they could not POSSIBLY do that seeing as they have NO CHOICE in the matter--never mind that at all, He is punishing them for allowing their bodies to be possessed by vastly superior intellectual beings!?!? Like I said, the absurdity of a literalist viewing is that it allows you to conjure up the most ridiculous dogmas in order to maintain your interpretation. Already in this discussion, we have had, Adam was not the first man--or that there was a previous Divine incarnation that walked in Eden, now we have animals having free will, so that we can have them punished for "allowing" their bodies to be possessed.
Still counting. (We don't even know there was a possession at all, but never mind. You get to infer as many other dogmas and facts as you like to keep a literalist interpretation
) Lets keep reading and see how many more we create in order to maintain that Genesis was totally literal.
The creation accounts were also written from two oral traditions of the Hebrews. It cannot be denied that they may very well have been a poem/song describing the creation. The arrangement certainly fits the style.
Do you read Hebrew or is this an opinion that you have gathered from a scholar?
Of course I rely on scholars. So do you, of course. The problem is that you believe in a fiction that tells you that when you read your Bible, it's just you and the Bible (and God). Tell me, seeing as you you dont read Hebrew, how did you verify that the copy you have was properly translated by the SCHOLAR who did that translation?
Topic: Kababe and Other Evolutionists - Please Help Your Friends (Read 10232 times)