Jim wrote,
<< Paul, it is simply not fair to say that we concordists are rationalizing
things away. I will trust whatever you say about what the early Church
thought about the sky. The Jewish people thought Jesus would be a
military leader. Your logic is not leading in a good direction.
Standard Christian thinking is that God inspired the Bible. That includes
each and every prophecy of the OT. Jesus fulfills many prophecies.
On the road to Emmaus Jesus had to open the eyes of disciples, so they
could see what the OT said about him. Luke 24:27 "Then beginning with
Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning
Himself in all the Scriptures." >>
You are suggesting that God hid the teachings of modern science in Gen 1 and
did not reveal those truths to anyone until the late 18th century (D. Young,
"Scripture in the Hands of Geologists," pp.259-265; D. Young, Christianity
and the Age of the Earth, pp.46,57-59; B. Ramm, The Christian View, p.211)
and then only to scientists and some other educated Christians. That is
pretty improbable.
Secondly, on the firmament one more time:
1. All peoples everywhere on earth until touched by modern science have
believed the sky was literally solid.
2. The peoples of the ancient Near East in particular the dominant cultures
of Egypt and Mesopotamia believed the sky was solid.
3. The firmament in Gen 1 is called "heavens" shamayim; this is cognate with
the Akkadian shama'u which is spoken of in Akkadian documents as make of rock.
4. The only passage in Scripture which indicates the nature of a raqia' , a
firmament, is Ezek 1:22-26; and every commentary which has commented on that
issue has said the firmament was solid. (I checked 33 of them.)
5 If you say the firmament is outer space, you have the water above the
firmament falling from outer space as rain during the Flood!
6. If you say the firmament is atmosphere, you are placing the sun, moon and
stars (Gen 1:15, 17) in the atmosphere!
7. There is NO objective evidence for defining raqia' (firmament) as
non-solid.
Since there is such an abundance of data showing that the firmament is
something solid and absolutely none showing that it is not solid, the
concordist (and creation science) interpretation of it as non-solid is
properly called a rationalization (to protect the apriori belief that divine
inspiration necessitates scientific inerrancy).
Paul
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