At 10:17 PM 3/8/97, Dario Giraldo wrote:
>On Sat, 8 Mar 1997, Glenn Morton wrote:
>
>>
>> These arguments have lasted over 130 years. If one wishes to have an impact
>> and influence people for his side, he had better be prepared for quite a lot
>> of discussions.
>>
>
>The only impact I want to leave in my circle of influence is the leading
>of people to the cross. And the only thing I need for this is the gospel
>of Jesuschrist which is the power to carry on this task. Logic and
>reasoning will never work.
We are all saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Works won't save us;
logic won't save us either.
However, creationism is not an evangelical tool and never has been (although
some try to misuse it that way). It is a discipleship tool. The heart can
not rejoice in that which the mind believes is false. For those of us in
science who were taught, like I was, the YEC position, and then found that
none of the YEC scientific facts withstood scrutiny, this creates a
tremendous internal struggle AFTER we have already been Christians for
years. We are told by YECs that if the earth is not young, if the flood is
not global, if Adam evolved, then the Bible is wrong. What do you think
happens to a person when he becomes convinced, after studying the evidence,
that the Flood can not be global and that the earth is very much older than
6000 years, and that there is good evidence of a physical relationship
between man and the apes?
The gospel is silent upon these issues and the person is left to struggle
alone. Lots of today's atheists, who are active in anti-creationist and
anti-christian activities, are former YECs who feel as though they had been
duped and lied to about the evidence. Creationism is needed to help prevent
people from leaving the faith. It never brings people into the faith.
When I went through my crisis, I would ask my YEC friends how to handle
these problems and they would tell me, "just believe" or 'You can't believe
what those geologists say.'. They rarely even knew the data or issue I was
talking about because they were not scientists. Because no one could explain
to me how the Bible could be historical at the same time that the scientific
data could be true, I very nearly left the faith.
Did Paul succeeded in using logic and
>reasoning in Athens ? Did Paul made an impact on his day ?
Actually he made a big impact during his day and we are the beneficiaries of
that.Look at Acts 17:1-9. Of Paul and Silas it is said,"These men who have
caused trouble all over the world have now come here" Someone that doesn't
make any impact on his fellow humans does not have such things said about
him. Beyond that, Paul planted somewhere around 20 churches. That is a
pretty good impact.
>
>snip...
>>
>> "The remarkable increase in the average length of life during the past 2,000
>> years -from 20-25 years to 70 years under favourable conditions--has
>> increased the likelihood that a person may live to the maximum limit of his
>> span of life."
>>
>More remarkable was the life span before the flood and division of the
>earth: humans lived to 900+ years. What happened in these two events
>that shortened the lifespan to slightly over 100 by the time Abraham came
>into the picture.
I don't know what happened, what do you think happened?
>Glenn, you set the time at 4004 BC. I just took Scripture and compiled
>dates. That is where the chart came from and what The Bible says. If you
>don't like the results, then propose a different scenario.
I just did proposed another scenario. What do you think the chart below is?
but let me modify it again to be more consistent. You may not like this but
it IS a scenario.
Year Birth of: Age Siring Children
? Adam 130
? Seth 105
? Enos 90
? Cainan 70
? Mahaleel 65
? Jared 162
? Enoch 65
? Methuselah 187
? Lamech 182
? Noah 500
? Sem 102
? Flood -Couldn't resist :-)
? Arphaxad 35
? Cainan ?
2311 Salah 35
2281 Heber 30
2247 Peleg 30
2217 Reu 30
2185 Serug 30
2155 Nahor 29
2126 Terah 130
1996 Abraham 99
1896 Isaac 58
How many other gaps exist that are not filled in?
Of Cainan you wrote:
>Left him out because I don't have any record of his age.
This is exactly my point. Because you have no record of his age, your
chronology is wrong. Adam was not created in 4004 B.C. and it raises the
issue of how many more gaps exist in that genealogy. The fact that there
are 10 generations before the flood and 10 after up to Abraham has the
appearance of a memory device. Because of this gap you can not critize
someone who believes that the creation did not occur in 4004 B.C. Their
position is firmly planted in Scriptural authority.
>Do you know what a levirate marriage is ? In any case, it was the custom
>or practice of a man fathering children with the wife of his brother in
>the event that the brother died without any children. To maintain his
>brother bloodline, sort of. When this situation happened, both men were
>fathers of the same child.
I ignored your levirate marriage issue because it is quite unworkable. Two
issues. This was prior to the time that law was written but the claim could
be made that the law was in effect prior to that time. So, secondly, when
that happened, the genealogical table did not list both fathers. It listed
the dead guy as the father and the lineage was carried back through the dead
guy. Eusebius, the 3rd century historian, claims that that is exactly what
causes the difference between Luke's and Matthew's genealogies. Luke
followed the biological lineage, Matthew followed the legal lineage. Show
me one documented Hebrew lineage in which both fathers are listed in which
one of the fathers is listed as the father of the other guy. Thirdly, to do
what you suggest means that the living brother is listed as the father of
the dead brother. I know of no examples of that either. Can you give me one
documented example of a man being listed as the father of his dead brother
in such lineages?
>
>That is why I mentioned that we don't have Luke or the archives he used to
>compile his genealogy. That doesn't mean that Genesis or Luke are
>erroenous or full of gaps. As I demostrated in with the chart, there
>aren't any gaps.
>
>But if you insist that gaps exist, hey you'll win. For you they are, for
>me they aren't and I proved. Take the names down and do the math (using
>Scripture) and tell me otherwise.
So to quote you concerning Cainan,
>Left him out because I don't have any record of his age.
This does not seem to be a good methodology. It seems to imply that if the
data does not support your view you are willing to ignore it. Cainan is
most assuredly in the Scripture. And lots of Biblical genealogies have
grandfathers becoming the father of their grandsons. In Matthew 1:8 we are
told that Jehoram begat Uzziah, but in 2 Ki 8:24 we find that Jehoram was
the father of Ahaziah, in 2 Kings 11:2 we find that Ahaziah was the father
of Joash and in 2 king 14:1 we find that Joash was the father of Amaziah, in
2 ki 14:21 we have Amaziah being the father of Uzziah (or Azariah). The
Matthew account gives no indication of the gap.
John Whitcomb and Henry Morris talk about this. "In 1 Chronicles 26:24 we
are told that 'Shebuel the son of Gershom the son of Moses was ruler over
the treasures.' in the days of David. Here we have 400 years of generations
skipped over between Shebuel and Gershom." Genesis Flood p. 481
Hebrews used the genealogies differently and it is well documented.
>
>> snip...
>> Maybe their view of what constitutes a lineage is different from ours.
>>
>This is an easy one to resolve. Find a Hassidic Jewish Rabbi and ask him
>what constitues a lineage for them.
It is easier to document this from internal Scriptural accounts. I would
trust what I read in the Scripture more than some modern opinion. Wouldn't you?
>I believe in this exchange of data, that there is a lack understanding of
>the meaning and importance that complete genealogies were to jewish people
>living in the 1st century AD (when the book was written). We do faulty
>analysis in taking a XX century north american perspective to view these
>Scriptures with pure technical eyes. Textual criticism of a book must take
>into account the setting and targeted audience of the work.
I think I am doing that. The account of Whitcomb and Morris cite is entire
confined to a BC, premessianic audience. They didn't blink an eye about
having a genealogy skipping hundreds of years. Whitcomb and Morris note that
Ex. 6:20 says Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she
bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were a hundred
and thirty and seven years." This sounds like Amram was the direct father of
Moses but this can't be the case. In Ex. 6:20 we find that Amram had 3
brothers, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Their "father" was Kohath. When Moses
performed a census in Numbers 3:17-19 and 27-28 we find that Moses and
Aaron's grandfather had 8,600 descendants.Does this mean that Moses' 3
uncles were extremely promiscuous and had 8597 children and Amram had only
3 children? Does it mean that Amram is not the brother of Izhar, Hebron and
Uzziel? Unless Kohath, Amram, Izhar and Hebron were terribly promiscuous,
the only reasonable explanation is that Amram is not Moses' father or Kohath
is not the direct father of Amram. I cite John C. Whitcomb as the
authoritiy on this from the Genesis Flood. He is no liberal theologian,
I have given you a couple of examples of Old Testament uses of the phrase
'son of" which are not used in the sense you want to use for the
genealogies. Can you provide any internal Biblical evidence for Cainan
being a levirate marriage?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm