Jim said,
<< Paul writes
>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
Paul, you do raise an excellent point here. Perhaps you are asking,
How could God be so deceitful?
Well, I'm not God. But nobody else is currently standing up for a
Bible that contains anything more than a fable for Gen 1. >>
I am not suggesting that God is deceitful. I am suggesting that if no one saw
the concordistic interpretation of Gen 1 until modern science arose, that it
probably came from modern science not from the Bible. After all, it is not
much of a prophecy if no one understood it until after modern science said it
first. This is particularly true since the primary intention of the text is
not to communicate scientific knowledge.
Nor am I or anyone on this list to my knowledge saying Gen 1 is nothing more
than a fable. It contains profound revelation about the nature of God and
what he has done; but, like the parables of Jesus it is not necessarily
actual history. This is not to deny that it was history of sorts to the
original readers; but, we are reading over their shoulders. It was not
originally given to us. Interpreted in context, it becomes parabolic to us.
I commend the answer given by Allan Harvey.
Paul
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