Posted on 08/31/2002 5:30:20 AM PDT by vance
Or, we could take one aspect of the Bible, prophecies for example, and consider the truthfulness of what God has said.
God tells us that there is a way we can discern His actual Work from false "translations" by human beings like those in the "Jesus Society":
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth and he will tell them everything I command them...if what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.
Deuteronomy 18:18, 22
Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me; I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand and I will do all that I please.
Lets examine just one of God's prohecies and see if it came to pass. If "man's translation" is what the Bible is, and not the Word of God, then we will know this based on the failure of the prophecy to come true.
From Why I Believe by Dr. D. James Kennedy:
The prophecies of the Scripture, on the other hand, are incredibly specific and detailed. They must be exactly fulfilled. The prophecies cannot possibly be just good guesses because they concerned themselves with things that had no likelihood of ever coming to pass. They predicted the very opposite of the natural expectations of human beings. They cannot have been written after the events and pawned off as prophecies because in hundreds of instances the fulfillment of the prophecy did not take place until hundreds of years after the death of the prophet. In many cases, the fulfillment came after the completion of the Old Testament and even it's translation into Greek in 150 B.C.
Consider the prophecies concerning Tyre and Sidon, two great cities of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Tyre was to the sea what Babylon was to the land. The great city of Carthage was simply one of the daughters of Tyre, and yet at it's height, the prophet in the Old Testament declared that the city of Tyre would be destroyed, never to be rebuild, and never again to be inhabited (Ezekiel 26:19-21). He warned the city of Sidon that the inhabitants would be decimated, but the city would continue (28:21-23). The facts are that the city of Sidon was attacked, it was betrayed by its own king, forty thousand of the inhabitants were killed; but the city of Sidon continues until this time.
Dr. Kennedy explains what happened to the city of Tyre: some of the specific prophecies that Ezekiel spoke about it- "And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God... And they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water... And I will make thee like the top of a rock... thou shalt be built no more, for I the Lord have spoken it" (Ezekiel 26:4-5, 12-14).
Some might say that Ezekiel wrote this prophecy after the events happened, but that is impossible. Centuries went by. Two hundred fifty years later, when Ezekiel had long been moldering in his grave, most of the walls of Tyre still stood jutting into the sky-mute testimony to the fact that the prophecy had not been fulfilled. Millions of tons of stone, rubble, and timbers were left, and yet God had said the city would be scraped clean like the top of a rock- that the stones and the timbers an the very dust of the city would be cast into the sea. What madman could possibly come along two hundred fifty years later and complete this unfulfilled prophecy? It seemed as if God was wrong; yet the Bible had declared, "I the Lord have spoken it."
Then, like a bugle call, there came a thrill of terror out of the north, as a mighty conqueror appeard on the horizon. Alexander the Great was poised at the Strait of the Dardanelles readying his attack on the dominant Persian Empire. He crossed that strait and gave to the king of Persia his first crushing defeat. The mighty Persian army turned and fled to the south, then inland to the east, with Alexander in hot pursuit. However, before turning inland to follow the fleeing army, Alexander, as a great strategist, decided to nullify the effects of the mighty Persian navy. ....Finally Alexander came to new Tyre, built with impregnable walls a half mile out in the Mediterranean. He commanded the city to surrender. When its inhabitants laughed at his command, Alexander, with his chief engineeer, Diades, concieved the boldest and most daring plan in the history of warfare: They would build a causeway across the half mile of the Mediterranean Sea to the island of new Tyre. Where would they find the materials for such a causeway? The order was issued by the great king: "Tear down the walls of Tyre, take the timbers and the stones, the rubble and the logs, and cast them into the sea." So the great army of Alexander obediently began to fulfill the word of God.
This is just one of the two thousand predictive prophecies in the Old Testament alone and none of them are lucky guesses. How many proclamations from finite human beings like Jean Dixon have ever come to pass?
There are people who will convince themselves that the Bible is either written by man or is only "man's translation" and use that as an excuse to reject God and His message of salvation. There are very obvious cases of "man's translation" Bibles like the God hating feminists going through the Bible and changing things like "God the Father" into "Goddess the Mother" and so on. God has told us to test the prophets- the glaring example of fulfilled prophecies is one of the most definitive arguments for the authenticity of the Word of God. If that part is factual and true, then there is no logical reason to doubt the rest.
You shouldn't need any official explaination; there's only one possible way the things COULD have been built and that does not involve carving that many stones, of that size.
Those blocks were POURED, and not cut. What you do is have elephants and oxen pull wagons loaded with stone chopped into 5 - 50 lb chunks in wagons to the pyramid site from the quary, dump the stuff into a form, pour something resembling cement into the mold, allow time for it to harden, and then move on to the next block. You use the sides of existing blocks as sides of the mold, meaning you never need more than three sheets of plywood or whatever their equivalent of plywood was, and you usually just need two.
If I had to bet it, I'd bet that neither (koran or BOM) would.
The Sumerians predated the OT by 1000 years so I think it unlikely that they corrupted the Noah story. Perhaps it was the other way around.
My friend, if you have a mind that accepts the Flood story as literal truth we have little to talk about.
JOS 10:11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.etc. In other words, the kinds of things Velikovsky wrote about.
It is a dogma of establishment science that the tale of the biblical flood is a fairytale or, at most, an aggrandized tale of some local or regional flood. That, however, does not jibe with the facts of the historical record. The flood turns out to have been part and parcel of some larger, solar-system-wide calamity.
In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within a short space:
Gen. 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;...These were seven days of intense light, generated by some major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:Gen. 7:10 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth."
"...Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days..."
Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".
It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. It may not say so directly, but the ages given in Genesis 5 along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:
Gen. 5:25 ->"And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.
<i.e. he lived 969 - 187 = 782 years after Lamech's birth>
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son. And he called his name Noah...
<182 + 600 = 782 also...>
Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; seven days prior to the flood...
Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT.
From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:
...however, Lekah, Gen. 7.4) BR 3.6 (in the week of mourning for Methuselah, God caused the primordial light to shine).... God did not wish Methuselah to die at the same time as the sinners...
The reference is, again, to Gen. 7.4, which reads:
"For yet seven days, and I shall cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights..."
The note that "God did not wish Methusaleh to die at the same time as the sinners" indicates that Methusaleh died at pretty nearly precisely the beginning of the week prior to the flood. The week of "God causing the primordial lights to shine" was the week of intense light before the flood.
What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.
The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc. Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the memory of the seven days prior to the flood.
If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the storyteller (isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the population, and never included in the OT story directly.
Greek and Roman authors, particularly Hesiod and ovid, Chinese authors and others, note that small groups of men and animals survived the flood on high places and on anything which could float for a year. I do not see an essential contradiction between this and the biblical account. Noah's descendants were probably unaware of anybody else surviving and wrote the story that way.
Perhaps you would like to name one where that occurred. Arguing religion with evangelicals is like slapping at fleas.
You have to be kidding with this one.
Not that it wouldn't have been possible to do, just that it would have been OBVIOUS all along.
I've read as much about Mormonism as I care to but I'd advise against opening that can of worms.
I'm not sure where I professed to know about everything else. Nothing I have said is on my own authority (of which I have none in this field). It's not secret knowledge; it's available to everyone.
Here is one small excerpt from this website:
"The use of moulds was discussed in the earlier MAES article on concrete pyramids, and all I will add here is that, amongst the numerous objections to their use, perhaps the most telling is the great variety in the shape of core blocks used to construct pyramids, including the Great Pyramid. If these blocks were moulded, an equally large number of irregularly shaped moulds would have been needed."
Look, the book I suggested earlier, evidence that Demands a VerDict by McDowell is chock full of evidence. It gives example after example of where 19th century critisms of the Bible's accounts were later refuted by archeology. It has happened so many times that it is not unreasonable to assume it won't happen again. Not finding the cities does not mean they did not exist- it just means they have not been found yet. Read that chapter in the book and get some good examples of how many confirmations there have been.
The Elba tablets, writen 600 years before the oldest Sumerian writings of creation accounts, have a creation story that is much closer to that of Genesis than that of the Sumerians. If the Creation account of Genesis is closest to the oldest account we have, why should the situation be reversed in the flood account?
Except for sub-saharan Africa, flood stories are found around the world, many of them with striking similarities to the account of Noah. We don't know what would happen if a few well placed asteriods displaced the oceans water's onto dry land, or if a supernova's rays caused the megatons of methane crystals on the ocean floor to phase change into gas.
I have no doubt Noah was a historical figure and a great cataclyism actually occurred. I don't know if it was "global" in the modern sense or global in the sense of the perspective of the authors. The "world at that time", as Peter put it in the NT, was a smaller place. Maybe God called "other Noahs" or other righteous people to survive in other places, and the bible is only the record of the Noah that gave rise to the Hebrews. I don't know that. I think the Ark carried eight persons and they were the ancestors of all the peoples listed in Genesis 11 and perhaps the rest too.
I have been walking on this path for a long time, and I have seen many seemingly irreconciliable contradictions melt away. THis has happened so many times that I do not have to have the answer to every contradiction in order to believe the parts I do understand. That is not faith. Faith is not believing despite the facts, but trusting in the facts you know in spite of the facts you don't understand. THere is nothing irrational about that.
You: Have you Ever Really Read this Book ??
Most of it and why I can make that statement. Why haven't you read it?
You: Have you Ever Really Read this Book ??
Most of it and why I can make that statement. Why haven't you read it?
[18] Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Indeed, faith and reason go hand in hand. Try reaidng the Bible and you will have wisdom too..
Another quote from the link posted above:
Lambert Dolphin, the leader of the SRI work at Giza (see below) has a particularly valuable contribution to make to the debate over whether the pyramid masonry is quarried stone or has been placed in situ by means of the geopolymer technique. The SRI team were given permission to explore the interior of the Giza pyramids through various robbers' entrances and access tunnels. Dolphin describes how the "…interior of the pyramids have lots of mortar and the stones are very rough cut, smoothed only on top and bottom. Much mortar was slopped in around the edges of the interior blocks, and a thick layer was added on top to assure the next course started out level." He further added "The pyramid stones are covered with chisel marks, and the chisel[s] have been found in tailings debris." (personal e-mail from Lambert Dolphin, 14 March 2002). Neither the use of large amounts of plaster to level each course of masonry, or the need for extensive chiselling work are consistent with the stated method of geopolymer construction, described by Davidovits and Morris, which involved 'packing' adobe-like material to form masonry blocks of the required size and shape.(Emphasis added)
Memphis, Tennessee. Moscow, Tennessee. London, Kentucky. Troy, New York. Liverpool, New York. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.