Un-Orthodox?
Given that, it would be a good idea to know what exaclty is meant by death and also know what things we are talking about.
By on-orthodox I mean at variance with the VAST majority of biblical scolars.
If we rely on how old major biblical figures were when they died and do the calculation, Adam would have lived 4000 years before Christ. I think it was calculated that 2000 years had elapsed between Adam and Abraham, we know with a certain level of certainty that Abraham lived roughly 2000 years before Christ.
“The truth is the truth even if no one believes it and a lie is a lie even if everyone believes it.”
A 6000 to 10000 year old earth (depending on Masoeretic or Septuagint texts). I have no problem with that.
Got you. Anybody else want to chime in and explain how or why we can’t take at face value how old major biblical characters were when they died? Is 930 years old really 930 or is it 93 or other numbers? When people’s ages were mentioned, the intention was that readers were going to read 930 but understand that it wasn’t litteral but it meant many a year? Still, OT’s genealogy doesn’t add up if you’re not a proponent of a 6000-10000 year old Earth…
Quick question then…Got you. Anybody else want to chime in and explain how or why we can’t take at face value how old major biblical characters were when they died? Is 930 years old really 930 or is it 93 or other numbers? When people’s ages were mentioned, the intention was that readers were going to read 930 but understand that it wasn’t litteral but it meant many a year? Still, OT’s genealogy doesn’t add up if you’re not a proponent of a 6000-10000 year old Earth…
Seriously, do you think it was so different from what it is now?English is not my 1st language, but if I express myself correctly, I think what you’re doing, no offense meant, is to explain away something that can’t be explained away that easily. As I pointed out earlier there are people who suggest that the genetic pool was not what it is now and that life expectancy was not capped at 120 as it seems to be nowadays. Let’s say a full rotation took significantly less than 24 hours, going from the genealogy that’s outlined where about 2000 years elapsed between Adam and Abraham, another 2000 years before Jesus was born, that would place Adam’s life around 4000 years BC, you agree with that?
I am simply asking.
Why then were there figures thrown around if it was based on nothing. Why is it translated as “year” if a year was not 360 or 365 days. Nothing is to be taken at face value, a year was not a year, the genealogy does not add up, what makes one think Adam and Eve, or whatever their names were, are actual people who existed? Barely anything is to be taken literally except Adam and Eve, right? Can you imagine the masses of people reading the OT and the Book of Genesis thinking 930 meant 930, that whoever Cain married was not one of his sisters, whom, incidentally, is never mentioned as being his sister or his niece. Why would the oT state that Adam was 930 years old when he was likely anything but or that they didn’t have any measure of time, but never mention how Cain was related to his wife? If I’m writing a book about a French man who lived in the 1700’s, if he inherited a large amount by the time’s standard (150 000 French francs) I’ll try to figure out a way to let the 2012 reader have a tiny idea what that might represent. How is it useful to be told that God created the world in 6 days if it wasn’t 6 days? How did the author of the Book of Genesis come up with 930? The problem I have is if the OT is mostly fiction or things that no ordinary human being can comprehend with any level of certainty, why was it written in the 1st place? I don’t want allegory, I don’t want myths, I want to be told what happened, otherwise don’t bother telling me stuff that can be 1/4 accurate, 1/2 accurate. 100% accurate (Adam and Eve apparently) or not accurate at all. Catholics need to constantly reinterpret the OT to keep up with scientific knowledge, sometimes clutching at straws and making outlandish conjectures to try to keep the OT from totally falling apart and be placed on the book shelf next to “Santa Claus” and “The Tooth Fairy” See, here it says “year” but it’s not really a year, here it says “brothers”, but it doesn’t mean brothers.
Ah good point! Maybe everything “with a face” didn’t die.
Plants live in a different way from humans and animals do. They are lower on the hierarchy of beings. Also, Adam and Eve were given every green herb for food, only later did they eat meat (after the fall)Ah good point! Maybe everything “with a face” didn’t die.
So you claim that the first three days are of indeterminate lengths, but once the sun is created they are literal 24 hour days?
Ah good point! Maybe everything “with a face” didn’t die.
The only death that Catholic teaching concerns itself with is of the spiritual variety. This statement is moot.
Because people were weak of faith.
Well I’m not about to discuss the complications of how man came to develop a soul. On the bright side, it’s elaborated well more than the fairy tale idea that we once lived in the “Golden Age of powerful gods and extraordinary heroes” (as that Disney movie put it).
I would very much doubt it. As evidenced from what I’ve seen in other news reports here (like that one about God not needed in the Big Bang), science hits dead ends once it starts getting more complicated. There’s just so many variables you can get wrong. You might as well hypothesize what would happen if time travel was possible.
My thoughts exactly. I don’t know why people think the bible is such a great piece of literature when there is so many different interpretations, even within a single denomination, the whole thing just seems like a mish-mash of fairy tales, even the moral of the story isn’t even clear sometimes. IOW, it’s badly written fairy tales.:twocents: If it made sense to the people at that time, great, but clearly something has been lost in translation. I don’t know why anyone thinks an ancient group of writings can tell us more about nature than um, nature itself. Nature is where one should be looking for answers on all things physical, and sources for all things spiritual should be taken with a grain of salt. If nature tells us one thing, and the bible tells us something different, which should be believed?
Very often, what is meant may not be understood until much later.
No.