Re: Interesting contradiction in Genesis...
David Wareing (dwareing@apanix.apana.org.au)
5 Feb 1995 03:30:25 GMT
sftwrebuff@aol.com (SftwreBuff) writes:
>Chris Woodward (PSY) (woodward@luna.ec.usf.edu.) wrote:
>> If God didn't create the sun until day 4, then how did He keep
>> track of days 1-3 (since a literal day was measured by the sun)?
>One of the common mistakes that we English-speakers make when translating
>anything is to assume that idioms and sayings have the same meaning in all
>languages. For instance, to say that you are hot or cold means that your
>ambient body tempurature is higher or lower than is comfortable. However,
>to translate this literally into German would be a statement to the hearer
>about your sexual readiness!
One of the common mistakes that people make is that they change
the rules when something is an undesirable contradiction or
otherwise hard to explain.
>In Genesis, Moses saw that God performed a certain amount of labor, or
>perhaps a type of labor. Then, having finished that, God paused and moved
>on to something else. For lack of a better way of explaining this, Moses
>interpreted these breaks as "days". So, in essense, what we read as days,
>was merely seven different work periods, not literal days.
Sorry, all copies of the Bible that I have read refer to *days*, not
"periods of time". Moses had quite a good grasp of the concept of
days - he knew that a new day happened when the sun came up. Thus,
according to him, God finished his labours after 6 sun rises.
>Keep questioning, though. It's the best way to expand your knowledge.
I'll definitely question anyone who arbitrarily bends the rules to
suit their own views. This is similar to thread last year, where
people were trying to equate "light and darkness" with energy,
simply because it suited them.
--
dw
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