I know the Bible is not a Science Text But

[steve53]

I’m very curious where you are getting your facts.
It’s pretty common understanding that in today’s world, with medicines and surgeries and updated understanding of biology and such, we live much longer than any of our ancestors.

The ancient reader would have been surprised that people died?
How ancient are we talking, here? What century is this ancient reader who would be surprised by death?

.

Josephus relates that many members of the Essenes lived to be over one hundred years old, due to the regularity of their lives and the simplicity of their diet.

That was two thousand years ago.

We can’t expect to live much monger than that today.

 

[Hans_W]

Perfect DNA?
Huh?

Who had perfect DNA??

.

I think he means that Adam and Eve got their perfect DNA 6,000 years ago.

 

[John_Lazarus]

Josephus relates that many members of the Essenes lived to be over one hundred years old, due to the **regularity **of their lives and the simplicity of their diet.

Ahhhh…more bran, then.

 

[hansard]

It’s not about how long they lived. It is about the fact that man started living shorter and shorter lives as the world became more depraved.

The ancient reader would have been surprised when people started living shorter and shorter lives. They would have been surprised that people were dying.

We now have the opportunity for eternal life.

-Tim

And now that the world is completely depraved (so they say), humans are living longer than they have for probably thousands of years. How? Through science, medicine and knowledge of health.
Not all humans, mind you - only people who have access to that knowledge.

 

[patrick457]

And now that the world is completely depraved (so they say), humans are living longer than they have for probably thousands of years. How? Through science, medicine and knowledge of health.
Not all humans, mind you - only people who have access to that knowledge.

And the irony is, as we become more dependent on medicine we seem to become less resistant to diseases than our ancestors were.

Come to think of it, we moderns probably live too long.

 

[hansard]

I think the point remains: for whatever reason, people are living longer. Our ancestors proved remarkably prone to diseases we never see now. The plague wiped out one-third of the human race.

 

[TimothyH]

I’m very curious where you are getting your facts.
It’s pretty common understanding that in today’s world, with medicines and surgeries and updated understanding of biology and such, we live much longer than any of our ancestors.

The ancient reader would have been surprised that people died?
How ancient are we talking, here? What century is this ancient reader who would be surprised by death?

.

I didn’t make this up. I’m not that smart.

The very earliest stories in the Bible have people living eight hundred years. The length of life decreased steadily as the story progresses and man falls more and more into sin. This is what the reader would have noticed about the stories in the Bible. Jeff Cavins explains it in his Bible studies. Another has mentioned the Navarre Bible commentary. This is a very common interpretation.

People can understand the ages as literal if they want but that’s not the point. The point of the Bible is salvation. The Bible was inspired by God for one purpose alone - so that we can be saved.

Adam and Eve would have lived forever had they not sinned. Eternal life is available to man again. That’s the whole point.

-Tim-

 

[truetofaith]

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here… But IF the 90 years age of Sarah was really 90 “seasons” then Sarah would have been 45, which is close to menopausal age. Plus, if a married woman had not had a child by then (in those days), it would have been safe to assume that either she was barren or her husband impotent. And it’s possible that they may or may not have known about impedance.

So if Sarah was really 45 years old, she still may have laughed.

Again, this is just academic theory.

God Bless

…and Abraham wasn’t over 100 ? Where does this all take us ?

Moses didn’t part the waters of the Red Sea…the Israelites walked on a sand bar…Jesus didn’t raise Lazarus from the dead…he was only sleeping… and Jesus didn’t die on the cross, He was only badly hurt and the apostles revived Him, like the “Passover Plot” suggests.

I’m sick & tired of all the controversy and Bull S—, on this Catholic Answers website…and I am just about ready to leave, before I lose my belief in God!

 

[pianistclare]

It’s not about how long they lived. It is about the fact that man started living shorter and shorter lives as the world became more depraved.

The ancient reader would have been surprised when people started living shorter and shorter lives. They would have been surprised that people were dying.

We now have the opportunity for eternal life.

-Tim

THIS^^. Also, number had very significant meanings for Hebrews. The numbering and mention of numbers are not accidental. Read up on it, it’s very interesting.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I have two theories, I’m not sure which I believe to be more accurate.

#1: As we became further removed from the pure DNA of our first parents, and as the affects of original sin become more pronounced in the world, our lifespans decreased to where they are now.

#2: The standard unit of a year was measured differently in the time of Genesis, using a lunar cycle rather than a monthly cycle. There are approximately 12 lunar cycles per year (the general basis of the month system), and 900 lunar cycles is roughly equivalent to 75 years of age.

I do not know which of these I prescribe to more. I believe both are equally-possible explanations. With #1, it is the continuing effects of our sins weighing down on us; with #2, we account for the fact that culture was different in Genesis and need not align 1:1 with our current understanding of units of measurement (similar to how a day in Genesis doesn’t necessarily equate to a day by our understanding)

 

[Mintaka]

truetofaith: This is the Apologetics section of the forums. It’s supposed to be about learning the faith and defending it against controversy. There are bound to be arguments and misconceptions.

If you are getting tired of controversy, it’s perfectly okay to step back and do other things, for a while or forever. There are many ways to serve God and to learn about the faith. I’ve stepped back plenty of times. (Usually before I get disgusted. I have a lot of different interests that demand attention.)

phil19034: Nobody (except moderns) suggests that Abraham and Sarah, or Lot and his daughters, have exaggeratedly long lives. They are explicitly depicted as being a normal ex-pagan couple from Ur who were living to a normal old age, and that they then had Isaac in a miraculous way.

Now, when they encounter Melchizadek, King of Salem, he is explicitly depicted as being mysterious; and it’s not surprising that he is frequently associated with the long-lived patriarchs, to the point that many Jewish sources from ancient times have taught that he was actually Noah’s son, Shem, still alive after all these years. Many early Christian interpreters taught the same thing.

The way to read the Bible is on the Bible’s terms, with the help of the best historical knowledge. It’s a book full of wonders and miracles, and explaining that away is missing the whole point. If God has not intruded into history and is not almighty, there’s no point reading the Bible or worshipping, much less posting on the Forum.

Outside of a few academics, nobody gets worked up about Gilgamesh and the flower of eternal life, because nobody believes in it. Nobody tries to explain away the miracles of Ishtar, because they’re not worried that she’ll sashay up to the door with her lionesses in tow, and smite you with sex and terror.

People do get worked up about explaining away the Bible’s wonders, because they have a horrible suspicion that it’s all true.

 

[TimothyH]

Ahhhh…more bran, then.

This is funny but there is truth here.

Monks eat a vegitarian diet. Their big meal of the day is when they are most active, at lunchtime. They fast Wednesday and Friday. They live a very balanced lifestyle - prayer, work, relaxation, exercise, intellectual development - and their lives are very structured.

Many of them live to be 100 years old with good health until very late in life.

-Tim-

 

[truetofaith]

That idea seems to remind me of the idea of the historical Jesus where, for example, the miracle of the loves of the feeding of the 5000 was when the folks actually shared their food with others. I think we are amiss if we attempt to rationalize the miracles of God.

One of our priests gave that explanation for the feeding of the 5000. I yelled out give me a break …and I walked out …until the homily was over!

These comments get me mad!

BTW …the gospels say…the apostles came to Jesus & said it was getting late in the day & He should send the people away so they could go into the village & buy food. Jesus said that they should give them food & they told Him there was a boy with only 5 loaves of bread & 2 fish. That’s when the Bible describes the “Miracle” of feeding 5000.

No, ‘sharing of lunch’…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

One of our priests gave that explanation for the feeding of the 5000. I yelled out give me a break …and I walked out …until the homily was over!

These comments get me mad!

BTW …the gospels say…the apostles came to Jesus & said it was getting late in the day & He should send the people away so they could go into the village & buy food. Jesus said that they should give them food & they told Him there was a boy with only 5 loaves of bread & 2 fish. That’s when the Bible describes the “Miracle” of feeding 5000.

No, ‘sharing of lunch’…

I understand your outrage at the priest trying to minimize Christ’s miracle, but that is not the appropriate way to react. We are called to honor our priests, which you did not do here. Walking out is one thing, but to publicly denounce the priest during his homily is incredibly disrespectful. It needed to be addressed, but in private. Remember, we are to address the one with whom we have a grievance one to one, then with witnesses; if that fails then we address it through the offices of the Church.

 

[DaveBj]

Perfect DNA?
Huh?

Who had perfect DNA??

.

The original humans, immediately after creation. I realize that you, as a humanist, don’t believe in them.

 

[DaveBj]

One of our priests gave that explanation for the feeding of the 5000. I yelled out give me a break …and I walked out …until the homily was over!

These comments get me mad!

BTW …the gospels say…the apostles came to Jesus & said it was getting late in the day & He should send the people away so they could go into the village & buy food. Jesus said that they should give them food & they told Him there was a boy with only 5 loaves of bread & 2 fish. That’s when the Bible describes the “Miracle” of feeding 5000.

No, ‘sharing of lunch’…

Yes, the feeding of the 5,000, and the later feeding of the 4,000, are both described as miracles, but if those two crowds had been fed by people sharing their food, that would NOT have been a miracle; that would have been completely normal activity for people in that culture. Anyone with experience in the affairs of that part of the world (as I do, and as does Fr. Mitch Pacwa, a much more authoritative source than I) knows that Middle Easterners SHARE. It’s what they do. It’s not miraculous at all. The lad with the five loaves and the two fish did what came naturally to his culture – he shared. Jesus made that food satisfy 5,000 men, plus women and children, with 12 baskets of leftovers. THAT was a MIRACLE!

 

[patrick457]

Now, when they encounter Melchizadek, King of Salem, he is explicitly depicted as being mysterious; and it’s not surprising that he is frequently associated with the long-lived patriarchs, to the point that many Jewish sources from ancient times have taught that he was actually Noah’s son, Shem, still alive after all these years. Many early Christian interpreters taught the same thing.

This is really a side issue, but I wouldn’t say there were ‘many’. (I could only remember Sts. Ephrem, Jerome, and Nicholas of Lyra explicitly making this identification.) The thing is (you might probably already know this, but to explain for people who don’t know), the ages of the patriarchs is one of the trickier parts of Genesis, since the surviving versions just don’t agree exactly on how old they are supposed to be. The so-called proto-Masoretic Hebrew text (the ancestor of the Masoretic Text), the Greek Septuagint (based on another Hebrew version different from the proto-Masoretic text) gives yet another, and the Samaritan text (used by Samaritans today, yet another version different from the MT and the Septuagint) all give different ages.

Jews who used the proto-MT could claim that Shem is Melchizedek, since in the version they use, Shem would have been still alive at the time of Abra(ha)m. But that’s not the case with many early Christians, many of whom used the Septuagint or a derivative version, since in their version of Genesis, Shem should have been dead in Abram’s time. Now, those Christians who are familiar with the text Jews used (such as Jerome or Nicholas of Lyra - both knew Hebrew) or were using a non-Septuagintal version of Genesis (Ephrem) did know of and made this claim, but there’s another dilemma: how will they square this belief with what is written in the Septuagint? One writer got around it by suggesting that while Melchizedek was not Shem himself, he did bless Abram in Shem’s place: so in a way, he can be called ‘Shem’ because he acted as the latter’s proxy.

The thing is, this identification of Melchizedek with Shem wasn’t prominent historically among Christians (the Haydock Commentary even explicitly rejects this identification), until recently, when people like Scott Hahn (on the Catholic side) began to espouse this idea. Some of these folks will even say that this is ‘Jewish tradition’, but this is a half-truth: this is just the latest variety of the various ancient Jewish ideas about who Melchizedek actually was. As you said, he was a very mysterious figure. (In fact, it’s even likely that the ‘Melchizedek is Shem’ belief arose as a reaction against the Christian tendency to use Melchizedek, who is often presented as a non-Jew, as a prooftext for the idea that circumcision was not as important as Jews made it out to be - after all, if Melchizedek was a priest of God, how come he did not undergo circumcision? In other words, by making Melchizedek to be one of the distant ancestors of the Hebrews, the Jews ‘domesticated’ him and made him a less problematic figure.)

 

[truetofaith]

I understand your outrage at the priest trying to minimize Christ’s miracle, but that is not the appropriate way to react. We are called to honor our priests, which you did not do here. Walking out is one thing, but to publicly denounce the priest during his homily is incredibly disrespectful. It needed to be addressed, but in private. Remember, we are to address the one with whom we have a grievance one to one, then with witnesses; if that fails then we address it through the offices of the Church.

I was in the rear of the church and although it was rude for me to yell out…I wanted people around me to, see that there is something wrong with what he was saying. The people are very complacent and just sit in the pew like they are being brainwashed.
That particular priest is always saying something, controversial. I talked to him, later & he felt it was a possibility, for Jesus to use that method…I left frustrated.

After mass, I talked to some friends and they weren’t upset or even realized there was anything odd about what he suggested.

 

[patrick457]

Yes, the feeding of the 5,000, and the later feeding of the 4,000, are both described as miracles, but if those two crowds had been fed by people sharing their food, that would NOT have been a miracle; that would have been completely normal activity for people in that culture. Anyone with experience in the affairs of that part of the world (as I do, and as does Fr. Mitch Pacwa, a much more authoritative source than I) knows that Middle Easterners SHARE. It’s what they do. It’s not miraculous at all. The lad with the five loaves and the two fish did what came naturally to his culture – he shared. Jesus made that food satisfy 5,000 men, plus women and children, with 12 baskets of leftovers. THAT was a MIRACLE!

The problem with these claims even is not so much that they’re claiming the biblical miracles to be fiction, but that they are trying to discount an important element of the story while still trying to say that the story as recounted was historical. (In short, these people are trying to have their cake and eat it at the same time.) ‘Rationalists’ won’t say the stories are made up: they’ll say it happened, but all that supernatural stuff must have a naturalistic explanation, because after all, we all know the supernatural doesn’t really exist. They’re trying to say that the Bible is historically true, but first it must be stripped of anything that’s ‘unnatural’.

This is why I actually have more respect for people who simply dismiss the biblical stories as outright made-up stories: I don’t agree with them of course, but at least they’re more consistent than the rationalist crowd. They at least admit that you can’t just strip these stories of their supernatural content and come up with some naturalistic ‘explanation’ to explain the miraculous away, even if they also believe that the supernatural doesn’t really exist.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

The problem with these claims even is not so much that they’re claiming the biblical miracles to be fiction, but that they are trying to discount an important element of the story while still trying to say that the story as recounted was historical. (In short, these people are trying to have their cake and eat it at the same time.) ‘Rationalists’ won’t say the stories are made up: they’ll say it happened, but all that supernatural stuff must have a naturalistic explanation, because after all, we all know the supernatural doesn’t really exist. They’re trying to say that the Bible is historically true, but first it must be stripped of anything that’s ‘unnatural’.

This is why I actually have more respect for people who simply dismiss the biblical stories as outright made-up stories: I don’t agree with them of course, but at least they’re more consistent than the rationalist crowd. They at least admit that you can’t just strip these stories of their supernatural content and come up with some naturalistic ‘explanation’ to explain the miraculous away, even if they also believe that the supernatural doesn’t really exist.

I agree, I may think they’re wrong, but at least they’re not picking and choosing which parts they want to believe.