Aight, I just subscribed to this board to pick yall's collective brains.

I'm reading the Bible and I have lots and lots of questions. I'm also reading it out of order, picking chapters that interest me, or ones I've heard more about.

Anyway, here's the first round, all taken from Genesis:

1) What's with God using pluralistic language in Gen.1:26 and Gen 3:22?
2) What's with two differing creation timelines? Chapt. 1 says vegetation was made in day 3 and man in day 6. In the next chapter it states man was created before vegetation
3) In chapt. 3:14-15 There is reference to other people killing Cain. Who would these other people be if all people were descended from Adam and Eve?

I'm not trying to flame war with this, I promise. And if these questions are elementary, I apologize, my ignorance of this topic is vast and deep.

Sorry, found another one, this one in particular bugs me alot...

My interpretation of Gen.1:29-30 is that God intended for all of animal creation to be vegetarian, so why does God look favourably on Abel who brought animal carcasses; animals that had been blessed by God (1:22), instead of giving favour to Cain who brought fruits, the foods intended for all of creation to eat?

You are now seeing the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and lack of logic found in the bible. When ministers and priests can't explain these then you will see as I have that it is a complete work of fiction.

Posted by Father Maurice Lester You are now seeing the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and lack of logic found in the bible. When ministers and priests can't explain these then you will see as I have that it is a complete work of fiction.

BULLSHIT.

It's all true, real, factual, and completely consistent with geologic time.

Or you can believe this:

Adam was made from the rib bone of a dinosaur, and Eve was made from a leftover cheeseburger.

Noah rounded up all the animals (except the unicorns, which he didn't like cuz they were snooty AND gay) and put them on the Love Boat. It rained, and their vacation was ruined.

Moses ran naked through the dessert (desert?) chased by crazy people until they all stopped running. They built a multiplex and charged admission.

Jesus lived with 12 men (enviable, eh?) and they all hung out with hookers, smoked shitloads of pot, drank gallons of wine, pissed in the woods and were all nailed to a single cross because they couldn't pay off their student loans.

Mark, Matthew, Jimmy and Duke started a rock band, but couldn't get signed because of their connections with Satan.

John, Clancy, and that bitch Jude went into porn, but failed miserably on account of erectile dysfunction (John) and Jude went all Religious and left for Mecca, where she opened a book store devoted to sacred stuff.

Is any of this as believable was what you're reading?

Ask me about the Sermon on the Mountain-bike sometime. It's killer.

I think the point of Genesis is to relay the story of creation which was originated well before the Israelites were around and passed on verbally until finally being put into written form. There are still people today who take every line of the Bible literally and say that the earth must only be a few millenia old instead of billions of years and believe humans coexisted with dinosaurs. My feeling is that the principals set forth in the Bible are far more important than the historical accuracy of its content. I tend to look deeper at the symbolism contained in the book of Genesis as opposed to seeing it simply as a timeline for creation.

Posted by Astrosfan Sorry, found another one, this one in particular bugs me alot... My interpretation of Gen.1:29-30 is that God intended for all of animal creation to be vegetarian, so why does God look favourably on Abel who brought animal carcasses; animals that had been blessed by God (1:22), instead of giving favour to Cain who brought fruits, the foods intended for all of creation to eat?

If I remember this correctly, it was because Abel brought God the best of his herd, in order to give thanks and honor (Honour, Pat?) to God. Cain, on the other hand, made no effort to pick out something nice.
Basically Abel made more of an effort.

Genesis 4:3-4
"3.In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast."




One more thing kids... when someone asks a serious question about something, lets answer a bit more seriously, ok? Joking around is fun and encouraged, but let's not get carried away.
/end stern mother speech.

Posted by Astrosfan 2) What's with two differing creation timelines? Chapt. 1 says vegetation was made in day 3 and man in day 6. In the next chapter it states man was created before vegetation

btw, none of these questions are answered simply, unfortunately most christians today can't answer them. I'm not even 100% sure although I have done some research. I'll answer what I can, one at a time.

2.
According to carm.org,
"There is no contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 is a detailed explanation of the six days of creation, day by day. Genesis two is a recap and a more detailed explanation of the sixth day, the day that Adam and Eve were made. Proof that it is not a creative account is found in the fact that animals aren't even mentioned until after the creation of Adam. Why? Probably because their purpose was designated by Adam. They didn't need to be mentioned until after Adam was created."

So actually, if you look at it closely, carm.org is right.

Genesis 2:4 When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

So we have more of a summary in Chapter 2, There was no man to work the earth, then God made streams, then man, and it states that God had created a garden (implying that he created it before man), which was used as a place for man to stay.

Posted by Astrosfan 1) What's with God using pluralistic language in Gen.1:26 and Gen 3:22?

1.
This one gets me too. One theory is that the verses where God says "us" "we,", etc are clues to the Trinitarian nature of God. God is a Trinity of persons(according to Christianity): a Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are not three Gods, but one.

There is also the theory that God is using these terms to allude to the dual nature of God, as both male and female were made in "his" image, it is possible that God is both male and female (or neither) (and hold the hermaphrodite comments Pat and Kubla, thanks ).

One other theory I have heard is that God is referring to angels when saying "we" did this or that, based on the assumption that He allowed them to help with the creation process, even though yes, He could have done it all on his own. But we know from other parts of the bible that God has a flair for the dramatic, so who really knows.


These are just some ideas.

Posted by Astrosfan 3) In chapt. 3:14-15 There is reference to other people killing Cain. Who would these other people be if all people were descended from Adam and Eve?

Cain also had a wife in Ch.4:17

I've always wondered if God created other people after the fall of Adam and Eve, and decided to only center the story of the bible on one lineage of people.
Or there is the slightly more disgusting (in my mind) answer, I got from carm.org:

" Genesis 5:4 says, "Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters." We see that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. The genetic lineage of Adam and Eve was perfect so marrying a sister wasn't going to cause birth defects. It wasn't until much later, during the time of Moses, that incest was forbidden as the genetic pool became less and less able to stand interbreeding."

These people were supposedly Cain's younger brothers and sisters.

Posted by IrishLady One more thing kids... when someone asks a serious question about something, lets answer a bit more seriously, ok? Joking around is fun and encouraged, but let's not get carried away. /end stern mother speech.

I was being serious.

I believe you.

Posted by KublaKhan I was being serious.

I appreciated what KublaKhan had to say and he brings up an important point using humor which is very effective.

I think people get way too militant about the Bible and its accuracy when in reality it is just a collection of ancient books written by regular people like you and I who mostly lived in the Middle Eastern desert and happened to have a deep belief in Yahweh. I sincerely doubt that God was looking over the shoulder of or directing the pen of the author although my personal opinion is that the authors felt they were "inspired" (meaning there was a divine influence on them which made them believe they were qualified to receive and communicate sacred revelation) by God. We use the books of the Bible as a tool to try to understand God through the experiences of others who have interacted with and worshiped Him. Whether or not each passage is historically accurate is irrelevant to the nature of God revealed by the passage. Does it really matter if God created all we know in 6 earth days or if a massive flood covered the whole Earth? If we focus on the time it took God to make stuff in Genesis, despite the overwhelming geological evidence to the contrary, debate the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin or search endlessly for Noah's ark in the Ararat Mts. to prove the flood happened, we miss the entire point of the lesson. The truths of God revealed in the Bible are subject to wide interpretation but summing them up becomes easy when we remember Jesus saying that the most important commandment is to love one another. As we try to apply this to our own lives everything else falls into place and the Bible becomes the roadmap to understanding how others attempted to follow or teach this principal and what we can expect when we do the same.

Posted by Trixi I appreciated what KublaKhan had to say and he brings up an important point using humor which is very effective. I think people get way too militant about the Bible and its accuracy when in reality it is just a collection of ancient books written by regular people like you and I who mostly lived in the Middle Eastern desert and happened to have a deep belief in Yahweh. I sincerely doubt that God was looking over the shoulder of or directing the pen of the author although my personal opinion is that the authors felt they were "inspired" (meaning there was a divine influence on them which made them believe they were qualified to receive and communicate sacred revelation) by God. We use the books of the Bible as a tool to try to understand God through the experiences of others who have interacted with and worshiped Him. Whether or not each passage is historically accurate is irrelevant to the nature of God revealed by the passage. Does it really matter if God created all we know in 6 earth days or if a massive flood covered the whole Earth? If we focus on the time it took God to make stuff in Genesis, despite the overwhelming geological evidence to the contrary, debate the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin or search endlessly for Noah's ark in the Ararat Mts. to prove the flood happened, we miss the entire point of the lesson. The truths of God revealed in the Bible are subject to wide interpretation but summing them up becomes easy when we remember Jesus saying that the most important commandment is to love one another. As we try to apply this to our own lives everything else falls into place and the Bible becomes the roadmap to understanding how others attempted to follow or teach this principal and what we can expect when we do the same.

...seriously. I really meant what I said.

Posted by Trixi I think people get way too militant about the Bible and its accuracy when in reality it is just a collection of ancient books written by regular people like you and ....

I certainly am not militant about the bible (I haven't even finished the thing to be militant about it) but Noah Vale (what is his new s/n?) asked specifics about the bible, and while I could have brushed his questions off (not saying that's what you intended) by saying "Oh, well it doesn't matter that it's accurate or not, all that's important is the message," I wanted to answer his specific questions as best I could. While the message is the important thing, if you're looking at the bible from the Christian viewpoint, and you want to believe that Jesus was the messiah, you look to the bible to see what Jesus taught, how he lived his life. When a nonchristian or someone doubting their faith sees what seem to be a lot of discrepencies or misinformation throughout the entire book, why should John or Mark be any better? IF someone is basing their beliefs on a book, then yes, I think it is important that the book be mostly accurate, although I can see that perhaps an illustrative point might help here and there. But it should have been made clear, "This is a tale, and here is what happened historically." Otherwise, believing that the events in the bible happened, all of them, is like believeing that Alice in Wonderland really happened.

Posted by IrishLady I certainly am not militant about the bible (I haven't even finished the thing to be militant about it) but Noah Vale (what is his new s/n?) asked specifics about the bible, and while I could have brushed his questions off (not saying that's what you intended) by saying "Oh, well it doesn't matter that it's accurate or not, all that's important is the message," I wanted to answer his specific questions as best I could. While the message is the important thing, if you're looking at the bible from the Christian viewpoint, and you want to believe that Jesus was the messiah, you look to the bible to see what Jesus taught, how he lived his life. When a nonchristian or someone doubting their faith sees what seem to be a lot of discrepencies or misinformation throughout the entire book, why should John or Mark be any better? IF someone is basing their beliefs on a book, then yes, I think it is important that the book be mostly accurate, although I can see that perhaps an illustrative point might help here and there. But it should have been made clear, "This is a tale, and here is what happened historically." Otherwise, believing that the events in the bible happened, all of them, is like believeing that Alice in Wonderland really happened.

It's historic in the context that the stories told in it represented specific cultural values of that time and were not, necessarily, historically accurate within the context of actual historical events, per se.

As historical references to actual events?

A flood? Possible. The collapse of Sodom? Likely...whether anyone was transformed into pillars of salt is, well...er, no.

A snap and there's Creation [read: everything as it is]? No.

Walking on water? Multiplying fish and loaves? No. Rising from the dead and ascending into the sky in a bolt of blinding white light? No.

As allegories rich in symbolism and metaphor? Yes. Their purpose was intended to direct through conviction. Belief. Faith. They are works of great poetry, masterfully outlining societal codes and conventions.

These are stories whose themes were borrowed from other cultures. A virgin birth isn't wholly Christian. Other cultures have similar myths. As do many re: creation, flood, saviour, etc.

Reading the bible as a work of epic poetry, as a graceful piece of literature, frees the reader from dogma and orthodoxy. Through this lens, the genius of its creators shines.

Posted by KublaKhan Reading the bible as a work of epic poetry, as a graceful piece of literature, frees the reader from dogma and orthodoxy. Through this lens, the genius of its creators shines.

That was very nicely said, you should be a writer.

Posted by KublaKhan A flood? Possible.

Kinda off topic (okay, completely off topic), but I just finished a book "The Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock, which while kinda out there, somewhat addresses this topic.

The author describes the 83 or so different flood stories, 60 or so of which are independant of Judeo-Christian influence. All have the same message from god to a worthy individual, all involve a boat, many involve sending off birds looking for land, all involve saving the animals, and other similarities. Anyways, the author speculates that the reason for the similarity is that at the end of the last ice age, when the glaciers were melting, there was mass flooding and loss of human life, possibly the loss of a highly advanced civilzation (he doesn't go out and say it, but Atlantis seems to be implied) and that all these myths are archetypical historic truths that were passed on by the few that survived said floods and propagated the earth.

It's a good book, and there's references galore, and lots of hard scientific and historical evidence supporting his claim(s).

And thanks everyone for the replies.