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To: SuziQ
Those who wrote Genesis, on the other hand, though truly inspired by the Holy Spirit, were a couple of thousand or so years removed from Adam and Eve. Though we believe they wrote what God wanted us to hear, we have to interpret it, because the writers are not contemporaneous to the events. There are, for example, a couple of different ways that Creation is described. That doesn't mean the story was made up from whole cloth, neither does it mean we have to take it literally, in the sense of 'days' meaning the 24 hour cycle we know today. It DOES mean that God created everything, and something in every human longs to return to Him.

Wrong. People didn't write the Torah at all. G-d wrote it (according to a midrash, "974 generations" before the Creation). G-d then dictated these words to Moses, letter-for-letter. This is the immemorial Sinaitic Tradition which you pseudo-traditionalist Catholics reject because a bunch of late nineteenth century German atheists came up with theories to discredit it.

Everything has to be "interpreted," not just the first eleven chapters of Genesis. That Catholics choose to interpret one thing literally and another non-literally merely shows their hypocrisy to the entire world.

You are also ignoring the fact that it isn't just the "hexameron" that Catholics reject, but the entire first eleven chapters of Genesis: Cain and Abel, Metushelach, Noach's Flood, the Tower of Babel--everything. According to Catholics and liberal Protestants, when one comes to Genesis 12 suddenly mythology morphs into history.

What G-d said is true, whether or not anyone else was there to confirm it. You don't think G-d is trustworthy?

I think Catholics cling to a literal interpretation of the "words of institution" only because it ticks Fundamentalist Protestants off rather than out of any principal. And it seems to me more and more that this is so.

10 posted on 07/04/2012 9:05:55 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (Ki-hagoy vehamamlakhah 'asher lo'-ya`avdukh yove'du; vehagoyim charov yecheravu!)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
Nah, we Catholics stick to the literal translation of the 'words of institution' because Jesus actually SAID them, his Apostles HEARD them, then WROTE THEM DOWN IN THEIR LIFETIMES. That is quite a bit different from someone writing down an oral tradition from several hundred to a thousand years beforehand. And it is my understanding that what Moses is supposed to have written was the Law handed down to the Jews, after they were led out of Egypt, NOT the story of Creation.

You don't seem to understand that even if one doesn't take the story of Creation absolutely literally, that is, its occurrence over 6 HUMAN days, one COULD believe quite strongly that God created all that is in the Universe. We believe He is Lord of all, that He brought about many signs and wonders in the Ancient world, and even if all of them didn't happen exactly as it is written in the Bible, since many were described later, by people who received the stories many generations removed, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and written to teach the lessons that God wants us to know. And finally, that He loved us so much, even after we'd turned away from Him many times, sent Jesus to be our Redeemer.

13 posted on 07/04/2012 10:05:05 AM PDT by SuziQ
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