On the reconciliation of scripture to science

[oxmixmudd]

There were a number of the Early Church Fathers who clearly taught that the days of creation were a thousand years long based on the fact that Adam didn't die within 24 hours after eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as he was told ("for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" -- Genesis 2:17) but lived until he was 930 years old (Genesis 5:5). To them this indicated that the days were a thousand years long^[1].

For example, in his Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies"), Book 5, Chapter 23 (written between 175 and 185 AD) Irenaeus wrote, "And there are some, again, who relegate the death of Adam to the thousandth year; for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them, thus bearing out the sentence of his sin."

Twenty or thirty years earlier, Justin Martyr, while writing about the reign of a thousand years, expressed a similar sentiment in his "Dialogue With Trypho", Chapter 81, when he commented that, "For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years."

Later (c. 250 AD) Cyprian of Carthage, in his "Treatise 11," or "Exhortation to Martyrdom," (section 11), also expresses a comparable view in passing when he wrote that, "As the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand years..."

Victorinus of Pettau, who I've heard some say taught that the days were 24 hours long^[2][3]


















1. not to mention that the psalmist wrote that with God "a thousand years is as one day, and one day is as a thousand years" (Psalm 90:4; cf. II Peter 3:8). According to the Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Methodius said that Origen suggested the possibility that each day was a thousand years long based on II Peter 3:8.

2. James Mook, "The Church Fathers on Genesis, the Flood, and the Age of the Earth," in Terry Mortenson and Thane H. Ury (both employed by AnswersinGenesis), eds., "Coming to Grips with Genesis"

3. One source lists this as Jubilees 4:29-30 (HERE as well) whereas another says it was Jubilees 4:21-22

Thanks rogue, that is good information to add to the discussion. They were working through the obvious inconsistency a bit differently perhaps than we have, but it's still there, and they still looked at what else it might mean to resolve the tension between a superficial rendering and truth.

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Good opening post for discussion of the interpretation of Genesis and the apparent extreme conflicts between science and the literal interpretation of Genesis.

Like all ancient religions I consider much of ancient scripture to be the 'human view' of their relationship with God and Creation. By the evidence much of Genesis evolved from more ancient texts from other literate cultures, before Hebrews had a significant system of writing of their own.

The scripture of the Bible reflects an evolved human history of compilation of prexisting sources, editing and redacting. and not a specific written record of Revelation. I believe that the Bible was written progressively in history and not a history itself. This is a weak foundation for those who wish to portray the Bible as accurate history and specifically inspired Revelation.

There are two possible reasonable explanations for the interpretation of ancient scripture and related literature. The first is that the humanist version history of religions is a natural evolution of human cultures and associated religions, by the way a good argument based on the evidence. The second is the progressive spiritual evolution of humanity based on progressive Revelation from God.

Hi Frank,

I has been a while - yes? Anyway, we aren't really on the same page with this - as you know I do regard the Christian Scripture as more than just an evolution of human understanding of God, that God is revealing, inspiring, directly interacting with those that follow Him. So while I accept the possibility Genesis contains adaptations of elements drawn from the culture or cultures around Israel, I do not believe that in any stretch of the imagination that is all it is. God has inspired his prophets to write. And so while it may draw from who they were and what they understood, God was uniquely adding Himself to the equation, and what is finished in the scripture then is actually 'the word of God', not man.

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

A) you opine in another section that theologicial discussions are not for this section then start a thread trying to fudge your way to where you want to go that is purely theological

Yes, the thread I 'opined' in was a science thread getting cluttered up with your continual accusations and personal jabs. So If you punch and jab at me in this thread, maybe the other thread will be able to avoid the clutter of your irrational rants against my faith.

B) You try and fudge the word physical into the text when no such word appears

It is clear that is what Adam and Eve understood the warning to imply. And it is clear from the number of commentaries and historical writings that address the apparent contradiction it IS a bit of a problem.

C) in your zeal to get where you want to go you didn't even bother doing what any first year Bible student would do - consult the the hebrew. If you did you would see the best translation is

"dying you shall die."

Shucks you could have even Googled that one

And that comment reveals you don't even understand the point of the op. First, the problem is not 'dying you shall die'. The problem is 'in the day'. The most obvious understanding of 'dying you shall die' is not to mask or direct the rendering of 'in the day', but rather to emphasize the would DIE! And hence it is rendered 'you shall SURELY die'. But to get around 'in-the-day' you must first know they didn't die physically - which is the most obvious rendering without an adjective to qualify it.

The point of the op is that what God meant here was not the most obvious understanding of the words. And in fact, it seems contrary to the most obvious rendering, to the point scholars must ask the obvious question 'was God not telling the truth' and then expand on why and how the text can be read without there being a contradiction.

So your pretext that you wish to use to justify rendering the entire two chapters as non literal wherever you wish fails miserably. Simliar expressions are used in the OT to indicate the certainty of death that had not yet come. In the day that they ate the certainty of death became a fact - dying they would die.

Yes, that is a valid reading. Just not the one that would naturally derive from the text outside the context of having eaten the fruit and not immediately, physically dying. Indeed, the scripture tells us Eve 'saw that the fruit was good to eat'. How did she see that? And more importantly, why did she need to see that? The answer is simple, because she thought it would kill her physically and quickly. But somehow she learned it would not. So, she learned and needed to learn it was good to eat (i.e. not (immediately) physically deadly) - which implies she did not have access to the after the fact hindsight used to derive these other renderings.

Its also likely that for the first time cells in their body actually died as well.

so they had no hair or fingernails?



Jim

[oxmixmudd]

You all may want to address why the Catholic churches (RC, EC, etc.) and mainstream Protestant denominations don't seem to have much if any trouble with this "reconciliation" (terrible term, BTW, since it more or less concedes that the "reconciled" view is not-as-good-as the "literal" view).

Ready for Stinky, Jorge, and "seer" to spew self-righteousness...

I'm surprised you don't like 'reconciled'. And I don't agree it means 'not-as-good'. In fact I see just the opposite. The literal view is itself incomplete, lacking in capacity to explain or stand in light of what is known. Hence the need for adjustments that allow for reconciliation.

But a minor point overall. What term would you have used?


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Thats a rather convenient if less than honest characterization. In many threads the main bar (not side bar) is to bash Christians who don't adhere to your mythical Genesis viewpoint.

Again your bias blinds you. No, the main bar is not to bash Christians that don't adhere to my Genesis viewpoint. Most of the time when I come up against Christians in this forum it is because they are bringing in as science pseudo-science that can't stand inspection by a High School student and holding it up as proof a 6day creation interpretation of Genesis makes sense ... scientifically!

I general, I do not try to dissuade people of the YEC viewpoint. And in general I get along fine with them - they are my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is far more important they continue to follow Christ than it is to loose their faith over a confrontation over this issue.

BUT - I cannot ignore the claim that such 'proofs' can be called 'science' either. They can't. Nor is is acceptable that so many be led astray into believing there is some scientific way of justifying that belief. If a 10,000 year old world is where your conscience and understanding of scripture leads, then at least be honest enough to admit you take that on faith and don't build false crutches to support that conclusion made out of scientific lies.


Jim

[klaus54]

On the bright side it seems you have finally come to terms with your comprehension abilities being limited to short paragraphs and only two at a time. With time you will eventually come to see that its also limited to words no longer than five characters as well. Tip of the hat to your therapist. He's making progress which given you are the patient is remarkable. please pass this post on to him so he can translate (make easy) the words longer (not long) than five characters (alpha bet thing s) for you.

And your answer to following is... ?

I must be going blind, since I didn't see one.

A big-mouthed know-it-all Bible and Science genius like yourself should be able to cough up and type an answer in 30 seconds or less.

So Stinky,


You're quick to criticize others, but what's YOUR explanation of A&E and death as a result of the Fall?


See if you can do it in two paragraphs or less.

[klaus54]

I'm surprised you don't like 'reconciled'. And I don't agree it means 'not-as-good'. In fact I see just the opposite. The literal view is itself incomplete, lacking in capacity to explain or stand in light of what is known. Hence the need for adjustments that allow for reconciliation.

But a minor point overall. What term would you have used?


Jim

Fair enough!

I concede the point and like your definition.

[oxmixmudd]

The typical ANE audience or readers were high context. Did Oxy assume that the audience/readers were low context? It seems so.

The ANE audience was probably familiar with the idea of spiritual death. It probably was apt to interpret Genesis that way.

The context would indicate Adam and Eve understood the Death as physical. The serpent said 'You shall NOT surely die', then pointed out they would instead 'be like God' know good and evil. What is spiritual death if it is not seeking to usurp Gods position against His will!!! They clearly were NOT getting that at all.

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Where does Miller state this? As somebody cautiously interested in this question (though relatively resigned to its inherently speculative nature) I'm intersted in more to chew on.

IIRC, that discussion can be found in "Finding Darwin's God". For some reason I can't find my copy to validate that.


Jim

[Adrift]

I'm not so sure it's that generous. Have you ever seen the Ken Ham & Jason Lisle/Walt Kaiser & Hugh Ross debate? Walt Kaiser is no scriptural liberal by any stretch, and neither is Hugh Ross, but to listen to Ham and Lisle, you'd think they'd forsake the faith, just barely Christians in their eyes. There is very little tolerance for even the slightest deviation from what they think is the only right way to read these passages. And likewise their kin here at TWEB.

No, I don't know any of those people. I've heard of Hugh Ross, and Ken Ham, but I don't know that much about them (Ken Ham is a major YEC apologist, right?) The other two I've never heard of. I don't spend large quantities of time digging into the YEC vs. non-YEC debates. Honestly, I think it's mostly a waste of time. I spend most of my time reading textual criticism, socio-science commentaries, and the history of the Hebrews and early Christian church. When I refer to literalists, I'm speaking mostly from my own experience as one (non-YEC), and from those I know personally. I hate to think that some of the people you routinely debate in this particular subforum represent the norm. I imagine that there are literalists on this forum that you rarely engage with who are probably more open-minded than you think, but who refuse to post in this part of the forum because of its reputation.

Your point is valid, but again, I think too generous. But overall I think it misses the point of my OP. The point is not whether or not spiritual death is a valid reading. The point is that what God meant in the text of the words given was in many ways difficult to parse, hidden by the 'noise' of the most obvious rendering, the most direct one. Once we know that God does not always leave the truth on the surface, that sometimes he forces us to look beneath the surface, one can't honestly demand that we just ignore the evidence the world is very old when we read genesis 1.


So then what about the tendency to take it as all or mostly mythological, not based in real events? I don't quite go there. I think there are real events behind all of Genesis. But even for those that do, it would seem to me the real issue here is not so much whether or not the text has close ties to other mythologies, it is whether or not one can believe the text is truly inspired, truly the word of God if it is. I think the real issue is what we have convinced ourselves is a requirement of the text if it is to be God's word.

The reality is God is sovereign. And if he chooses to deliver His word through a donkey - what is that to me? He can do what He wants. It's not as if He never delivered His word through a donkey - right? So the important part is correctly understanding what the text is, how God was moving as He revealed and inspired it, and retaining faith in the process. Sure, there are limits, but its not as if God never uses parable or allegory to make a point. It really is more that if it's allegory or parable, we were wrong for a very long time about how we should have read it.

We may just have to agree to disagree on this. I feel I understand the point you're trying to make, I just don't think the particular example you chose in the OP makes the point you wanted it to make. Sure, most non-literalists that I engage with agree that, in the end, the Old Testament is inspired. I mean, I think that's pretty uncontroversial. And I agree with you that in God's sovereignty he could convey his message in a largely mythical or historically literal way. Though I'm a literalist, I'm open to being wrong about my personal view on the subject, and though I can see where a non-literal view can run into issues, I don't think non-literalists are any less Christian, or any less knowledgeable about the Bible (in fact, it's quite the opposite in my experience, they're very knowledgeable about the Bible).

But going back to your example, we have to think about how the original audience would have received it. I think that they very well could have interpreted it as a spiritual death, and that would still be a very literal reading. Again, someone who takes a more mythological approach might say, "well, yes, the original audience may have understood the death as spiritual death, but God didn't really talk to an actual man named Adam in a place called the Garden of Eden. The original Hebrew audience probably believed that, but we know that didn't really happen. However, I, as a non-literalist, believe the present Christian can still take something away from this mythical story".

Now, you may not go that far as a non-literalist, but again, the Christian non-literalists that I routinely engage with probably do. robrecht here on this forum, for instance, great mind, great scholar, he doesn't believe that an actual man named Adam existed, or that it's necessary that he existed. I doubt he believes there really was a garden of Eden either. And that's not to dog him or anything. I respect his view, and he has strong arguments for holding that view I think, but that's on a whole nother plane from "well, death can be interpreted as spiritual as well as physical".

[shunyadragon]

The typical ANE audience or readers were high context. Did Oxy assume that the audience/readers were low context? It seems so.

The concept of low-context and high-context in history of Christianity has a strong relationship to the different cultures and other factors within Christianity. The 'I' desire of comfort and certainty of one's worldview based one's particular inherited or chosen church and education are strong factors that often influence one's context. It is sort of a sliding scale that relates a degree of rational justification based on one's church, culture and education. As one's education increases it is most often true, but not always, that one shifts one's context to a more comfortable position to justify their beliefs with an increase in the knowledge of science. Sometimes pragmatism and reconciliation rules because literal views are not compatible with science and contemporary knowledge, but often the church and faith rules and one blindly or conditional remains stalwart in one's blind faith anchored in ancient myths, and in one way or another one rejects or only conditionally accepts science.

From my point of view it is more realistic to dump everything and start over with the facts and knowledge of science, and move on from there with a more objective perspective of the reality of the real world. Pragmatism and self justification of belief making square pegs fit in round holes are both goats dressed in tuxedos, hopelessly uncomfortable and dishonest.

The ANE audience was probably familiar with the idea of spiritual death. It probably was apt to interpret Genesis that way.

The consideration of the concept of ANE culture is too blurred among cultures to be of value as distinctive factor of determining one's orientation of belief. The simple nature of being human in our choices and decision making process blurs any significant difference between cultures. Whether death is spiritual nor physical is not a strong problem among the many contradictions between science and ancient religious text in Genesis and most other ancient scripture from different cultures.

[Juvenal]

I've read [Ken Miller's] books but at the moment I can't recall his precise position on Adam and Eve as specific real persons. Evolution in general makes the idea of a unique Adam and Eve difficult - as a population is required and population bottlenecks are destructive and of to severe typically result in extinction. So to retain a believe in a unique Adam and Eve requires belief in some sort of miraculous intervention in the creation of mankind.

But I don't see that as any sort of real problem - mankind is singled out as created specifically by God and separately from the other life on the planet.

Hello again Jim,

As you seem interested in looking at ways to reconcile scripture with science, this looks to be a good place to draw out the challenge. Now, I've read Ken Miller myself, and I'm quite certain he fully accepts the common ancestry of all the primates, including humans. There's no room for alternatives for anyone who's studied the evidence well enough to write undergraduate textbooks on the subject.

You've mentioned bottlenecks and their deleterious, if not entirely destructive effects. But it's not just that a population bottleneck can prove destructive, but that such a bottleneck, whether destructive or not, would leave unmistakable evidence in the form of restricted diversity within the genome. A single breeding pair, for example, cannot physically carry more than four variants of any one gene. Humans carry too much diversity to allow for a single-pair founding population this side of major speciation and hybridization events.

In generosity, I know that due to geological issues, Glenn subscribes to a view that places Noah, and hence Adam and Eve, five million years into the past, which could preempt the question of bottlenecks, but at the expense of allowing those progenitors the raw cranial capacity for language.

It's not just bottlenecks, either, preventing acceptance of a specially created Adam and Eve. There are multiple alternative lines of evidence pointing to the fact that our genomes are inherited from common ancestors with non-humans. I'm sure you're familiar with Theobald's 29+ evidences. Shared inactive endogenous retroviruses at common insertion sites requires either inheritance via standard reproduction or a deliberately deceptive creative act more characteristic of a Norse Loki than an Abrahamic Yahweh.

Our second chromosome is so clearly a head-to-head fusion of two chromosomes from our common ancestor with Pan troglodytes that we can locate the fusion position within 15 base pairs. The chromosome itself shows not just a telomere-reversed telomere region marking the fusion position within the chromosome but an inactive centromere as well.

Just the presentation of the categories for these evidences could go on for days, but the conclusion would remain the same.

Any possible candidates for Adam and Eve consistent with the scientific evidence must each have had parents. They were not, in any physical sense, specially created.

So then what about the tendency to take it as all or mostly mythological, not based in real events? I don't quite go there.

I don't quite argue you should. After all, you'll have seen upthread where I agreed with Adrift that this should probably be an intra-Christian dialogue. Still, if you do choose to purse a reconciliation of science with scripture, and especially with Genesis, I think you may find you have to.

As ever, Jesse

[Juvenal]

We may just have to agree to disagree on this.

Sometimes I "amen" a post, not because I agree with the author, but because I like what it adds to the conversation.

[Mikeenders]

Yes, the thread I 'opined' in was a science thread getting cluttered up with your continual accusations and personal jabs. So If you punch and jab at me in this thread, maybe the other thread will be able to avoid the clutter of your irrational rants against my faith.

What faith would that be? Like quite a few here (which is why you undoubtedly congregate here) you merely put anything you want into a text or teaching. Today its inventing things in the text and ignoring the Hebrew tomorrow it may be greek in the NT. Thats not faith thats gibberish. You even go to the totally nonsensical claim that the mythical can be truth redefining the word mythical as it suits. You have no faith in God )f youproperly define it as trust over others and other things) or the scriptures. You just reinvent the truth and God as it suits.

It is clear that is what Adam and Eve understood the warning to imply.

Yes I know - you have to fabricate things in the text to your own liking to get what you want out of it. We get no indication what Adam or Eve thought or understood because on that issue we have no such record. You are fudging as you always do

And it is clear from the number of commentaries and historical writings that address the apparent contradiction it IS a bit of a problem.

We have hundreds of commentaries that do not even get into the hebrew text. Some people still believe that we never took a step on the moon, or that the earth is flat. citing disagreement as proof is foolishness. Its the human condition that if you get enough people on any subject you will get a multiplicity of views. Problems arise in texts due to language and culture that we are far removed from not because we know for any fact that the people in that time and culture didn't understand it. the fact is "dying you shall die" is the phrase there in the Hebrew idiom. You can't live with it because dying implies an ongoing process not the instant death you claimed to make your "precedent" stick. Its all just rank foolishness because even if it were spiritual death it would not be any precedent to say you can do what you wish with anything else in the text. Like I said poor hermeneutics and its the things of cults and heretics

And that comment reveals you don't even understand the point of the op. First, the problem is not 'dying you shall die'. The problem is 'in the day'. The most obvious understanding of 'dying you shall die' is not to mask or direct the rendering of 'in the day', but rather to emphasize the would DIE! day' you must first know they didn't die physically - which is the most obvious rendering

Go learn some Hebrew and about translations you poor soul. Its not rendered any such thing - that is an English translation and the more accurate one is Dying you shall die. One of the problems of translating is that you try translate a cultural phrase in one language and time into modern English and in many cases in so doing you lose some aspect of the meaning when you go for a better english reading. further it DOES modify the meaning of that day. it is an expression used to denote a future death not a present one and similar idioms are used throughout the OT to indicate dying in the future similar to "surely you are a dead man". Is the person dead at that time nope but it indicates the certainty of the death coming. So in that day dying you shall die indicates that on that day your death and dying is certain. You just cant deal with those facts because .....oooops.... it would mean your pretext for trying to use that to stretch over the entire account of genesis 1 and 2 and render everything as mythical won't work.

The point of the op is that what God meant here was not the most obvious understanding of the words.

to whom? Its not to me and never has been. Further you are speaking several thousand years later of a culture you are entirely unaware of personally in a language you didn't even bother to check the full meaning of and are trying to claim you know for a fact what was their obvious understanding. Thats a flop

to the point scholars must ask the obvious question 'was God not telling the truth' and then expand on why and how the text can be read without there being a contradiction

To the point where many scholars dug into the Hebrew and properly translated the idiom because rather than your nonsense claim that a disagreement indicates an original problem in the text many scholars recognize the obvious - that we are looking back in time thousand of years , another language and culture and such misunderstanding can and often do arise from that.

Indeed, the scripture tells us Eve 'saw that the fruit was good to eat'. How did she see that? And more importantly, why did she need to see that? The answer is simple, because she thought it would kill her physically and quickly

Stop trying to reinvent the text dishonestly - nothing in the text indicates what Eve thought about the expression in that day dying you shall die. She doesn't even repeat the phrase in that day when she recollects the command not to eat the fruit.

But somehow she learned it would not. So, she learned and needed to learn it was good to eat (i.e. not (immediately) physically deadly) - which implies she did not have access to the after the fact hindsight used to derive these other renderings.

Wrong and NT wrong because the NT reveals to us that Adam was NOT deceived as she was, He ate wit with full understanding UNDECEIVED. What you are claiming above is in 100% contradiction to even the NT's understanding - that the Devil rather than deceiving her informed her of a truth God had hid from them. What the Bible calls deception you are calling education but the Bible indicates Adam was not so educated (he didn't buy it) but ate regardless (which would make no sense if he thought he would keel over instantly) and eve herself makes no claim to being educated but rather deceived.

To put a fork in this whole blithering hypocrisy and fudging has any one noticed something unusual in this argument. Do you notice that now "that day" has to be well that day and not a period of time, millions of years or any period of time beyond day? see the duplicity? You argue in genesis one that a day need not be 24 hours that Yom has a number of meanings in the Hebrew (And I would agree) but in order to get to your fudging "precedent" you turn right around and insist the same exact word Yom means a day 24 hours as the most obvious meaning (but have heart attack when the YECs say the same).

Take a bow for yet another complete fudge and intellectual dishonest flip flop.

[Mikeenders]

Again your bias blinds you. No, the main bar is not to bash Christians that don't adhere to my Genesis viewpoint. Most of the time when I come up against Christians in this forum it is because they are bringing in as science pseudo-science that can't stand inspection by a High School student and holding it up as proof a 6day creation interpretation of Genesis makes sense ... scientifically!

Don't try your little fudge and dance with me Mudd. It won't work. You know perfectly well that there are countless references to YECs being stupid, silly, brainless and all other kinds of insults and even those that adhere to Intelligent design even if not YEC are called IDiots. It goes waaaaay beyond simple saying they are unscientific' You've been right there in there with them piling on and supporting them in that endeavor with nary a word of support for those believers and if you say otherwise you are just lying -again.

The farce that you people only care about science is laid bare when you realize that several IDists accept evolution and are OEC and they still get called names because how dare they claim there are signs of design in the universe because thats not genuflecting enough to a strictly materialistic definition of science which is really your most guiding principle even in how you interpret the Bible. You are like athiestic theists - You don't take revelation from nature you take it from materialistic consensus. If you did take it from nature you would reevaluate your position in regard to things like HGT and epigenetics. You never do because consensus doesn't tell you to yet even though nature has spoken and species can be constructed and/or modified without regard to inheritance.