Arella Mae wrote:I think it's virtually impossible to reconcile many things in the Bible with science of today. Considering the time that the Bible was written and the obvious lack of today's knowledge there would be limited ways in which to explain many things.
Many words that we read in the Bible today have a certain meaning to us on the surface, but once you start researching into what the word actually meant at that time or the context in which it was written, it's a bit easier to understand the people were limited to only what they knew and what information they had, just as we are today.
For instance, a lot of the prophecies in the Bible were given in visions. Suppose someone had a vision of an airplane, a car, a tank, or even a shopping mall. How would they describe such things? A car perhaps could have been described as a chariot with lights. An airplane may have been described as an iron bird, etc.
I think it's very important to remember that just because they didn't have the science that we now have in no way means they were wrong. It just means they had limited information from which to draw.
Although that may be interesting speculation (to you, at the least), it is not evidence that any of what are reputed to have been prophecies in the bobble did in fact actually foretell the future.
The fact that you are obliged to rely upon particularist interpretation (meaning that the interpretation derives from and must be referential to a particular theological viewpoint) is very much to the topic of this thread, whether or not you realized it when you wrote that.
As i had assumed, and as Xingu's remarks have confirmed, the inspiration here is the prevalance of biblical literalism--the prevalance of a contention that the bobble is entirely comprised of literal, divinely-inspired and therefore inerrant truth. If any portion of it requires interpretation, or is subject to interpretation, than the contention that every word of the bobble is literal, divinely-inspired inerrant truth is thrown into doubt.
Furthermore, you discursus above refers again and again to what people in "biblical" times may have know, and what they might reasonably be expected to have known. This is one of the hilarious aspects of theology, and especially of fundamentalist theology (whether fundamentalist christian or any other description is not that important)--the necessity to back and fill when confronted with scientific, or texual contradictions.
So, in fact, whether or not you intend it, you are making the point of the thread, which is that the bobble
cannot be reasonably said to the entirely inerrant truth.
So, therefore, i have in the first example with which i have dealt, pointed out the absurdities of the flood story from the point of view of the physics of hydrodynamics,
and the implausibility of all of the general terms of that story (especially with regard to the putative age of Noah and company, and the management of the beasts which they were obliged to carry on board). But i have also pointed out the textual contradictions, and the common belief among reputable scholars--including talmudic scholars and Christian scholars--that
Genesis was written at different times by more than one person, and edited in the 5th century BCE.
If something is entirely, inerrantly true because divinely inspired, it would not contain such blatant and facile internal contradictions, and it would never have been necessary to have edited it--a process which nevertheless seems not have have succeeded in removing the internal contradictions.
