Posted on 12/06/2001 6:32:57 AM PST by Weatherman123
The second "account" does not say that there was no water and the first "account" does not say that there was no land.
Problem solved.
Maybe it's all just a nice story to explain why we are here--after all, Moses' people could not have comprehended the mechanisms of evolution and the Big Bang if God would have revealed that to him.
What is your point?
Are you familiar with the people of Saba and the Arim Flood? Evidently there are creation stories recorded in cuniform that predate the Sumerian Gilgamesh stories that predate the OT.
But how much time elapsed in between the two. For instance
In the beginning, when when Weatherman was born...
At the time when Weatherman began kindergarden...
So which is it? Did you start kindergarden when you were a new-born?
For example, you may be astounded to know that Genesis very closely parallels the Enuma Elish which was written down by the ancient Sumerians long before, and in greater detail, than the biblical book of Genesis.
It contains many internal contradictions which hamper its ability to derogate convincingly from the integrity of the received text.
One of the principal reasons for the documentary hypothesis is that XIXth century Germans believed that it was inconsistent to mix dry genealogies, formulaic censuses and colorful narratives into one continuous account. In XIXth century Germany this was considered a patchwork.
However, as we learn more about the literary production of the ancient Near East we learn that these "inconsistencies" were not inconsistent in their true cultural context.
Egyptian accounts of history will go from narrative to genealogy to legal decrees and back again in one text.
Basically what the documentary hypothesis comes down to is this: that a member of the fin de siecle Prussian upper classes would never have written the book of Genesis the same way an Egyptian-educated nomadic Hebrew of 1200 BC would have.
In this we agree.
Would the Prussian's favorite method of exposition be superior to the nomadic Hebrew's? That's moot.
Then there is a fundamental shift where the Writer is now asking questions and inserting a lot of his own commentary. Note that in the last few paragraphs there are no outsourced quotes.
This conclusively proves that the writer of the last few paragraphs could not be the same writer that wrote the first paragraphs.
Actually, I read a bit further and ignored the rest when it became clear that your examples of differences between the two seemed to revolve around nonsensical differences. (whether God is refered to as "God" or as "Lord" for instance.)
If the point of the thesis is that more than one human author may have contributed to Genesis there can be little doubt that you are correct. Indeed, the Genesis account was largely passed on over hundreds of years before being written down and may have several earlier sources. This is relevant because????
Instead, your post seems more like the arguments we have heard... "here is a contradiction in scripture... therefore scripture is not authoritative" and is probably not worth additional study.
I see however, that you have called in some of my friends from the "Neverending Thread" who no doubt can "assist" you better than I.
This "example" is among the oldest ever raised, and you most certainly did not come up with it.
That's just dishonest.
Well, I totally agree with you in that these creation myths were orally handed down, borrowed from other cultures and expanded on to include the people's idea of God and the beginning of the world and humankind and then were written by DIFFERENT writers, all in a spiritually inspired attempt to make sense of the world around them.
I can't understand how anyone can take Genesis as science.
When you think about it, what kind of truths do you expect to find in the Bible?
Historical facts? NO
Scientific truth? NO
What I do expect to find in the bible is MORAL TRUTH-but even some of those have been revised as we've evolved as a people. We no longer condone slavery or the taking of many wives, or treating woman as property. But for those who read the Bible literally, these things are OK because they are in the Bible??
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