RE: [asa] A parable of three investors

Iain, It is my reply to you which keeps getting rejected or held by that
spam catcher the ASA has on its list. It is very frustrating to have to
reply to something which no one else has seen because of this stupid spam
catcher!

Whenever my email, to which you are replying makes it to the list, I will
feel better about replying to this. Never the less, here is my reply to THIS
post, I hope this appears on the list.

>You are studiously ignoring the point I'm trying to make.

First off, I never ignore points. I may stupidly not understand them, or
your explanation may be obtuse, or even my explanations might be poor, but
I don't ignore points. I did reply but this stupid list serve doesn't
forward my posts for days on end! You can reply to what never got posted
here. Everyone else's seems to go through relatively quickly.

>Please make some attempt to answer it and stop making insulting
>suggestions that I'd "prefer the bible to be false". If you want Adam to be
2.5 Million years ago or whatever thenYOU are
>making the figures in the genealogies false (or as I would put it, not
literally true), so really this is the pot calling the kettle
>black.

Fair enough if I feel that the genealogies can not contain gaps.

>Let's go through the whole argument again.

>130 years after Adam's birth, he becomes the father of (ancestor of) Seth.
It then says he went on to live another 800 years.
>How does one interpret these figures?
>
>(1) As literally true. Adam got to age 130 and then fathered a child and
called him Seth. This pattern leads to the 4000 BC
>time for the birth of Adam.
>
>(2) So we can't believe a 130 year old could father a child (probably not
even be alive as the commonly understood life span
>in those days was 40 years. So there are gaps in the genealogy that account
for the 130 years. In other words, 130 years
>after Adam was born, Seth was born to one of Adam's descendents. This
allows for a believable generation time. However,
>it still means the timescale gives 4000 BC.
>
>(3) 130 years after Adam was born, an unnamed descendent of Adam was the
father of another unnamed descendent, whose
>distant descendent was Seth. To give a millions of years timescale, this
would be a span of around 1000 generations.

You accuse me of studiously ignoring your point, but you are studiously
avoiding mine. On Thursday, I replied to you about Yalad and that it didn't
mean father-son relationships. It is here
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200610/0451.html
(But it now has all those weird characters making it almost unintellible)

In that unposted post, I noted that Yalad doesn't mean father son always.
On the day my great-great grandfather had his son, he yalad me. He lived
another 60 years. I never knew my great grandfather and he is not my
father.

So, it looks like this:

William Henry Morton lived 21 years, and begat Glenn. He lived another 60
years. There is a gap of about 100 years in that sentence and it would fit
with the way the Hebrews viewed father hood.

I also noted that Jesus used the term son of David, and son of Man which I
believe is 'son of Adam'. Those are huge gaps. Adam was NOT Jesus' earthly
father. The Hebrew thinking on fatherhood was entirely different. Here is
another example.

Ezra 7:3 says: The son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth,

The problem is that Azariah was not the son of Meraioth any more than I am
the son of William Henry Morton--or maybe I should say, He is precisely a
son of Meraioth in the same sense that I am a son of William Henry Morton.

1 Chron 6:7-9 says: Meraioth begat Amariah, and Amariah begat Ahitub, 8And
Ahitub begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Ahimaaz, 9And Ahimaaz begat Azariah

One may try to say that there is a difference between 'ben' and 'yalad' but
I have at least one place where yalad is used in a non-paternal sense.

>Option (3) is the only one that allows the timescale to be stretched out to
the distance you want it to be. But option (3) seems
>ludicrous. What is the point of indicating that 130 years after Adam's
birth an unnamed descendent had an unnamed son that
>several hundred generations later was Great-great- .... (several hundred
times repeated) grandfather to Seth. What on earth is
>the significance of quoting an exact figure of 130 years? And what is the
significance of the remaining 800 years of Adam's
>"life"?

And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: 7And Seth lived
after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and
daughters

And William Henry Morton lived an twenty and one years, and begat Glenn:
7And William Henry Morton lived after he begat Glenn sixty years, and begat
sons and daughters

That is how you have a gap. If you think I am ignoring your point, I would
suggest it might be because I don't agree with it and you don't agree with
what I said.

>None of this (it appears to me) makes any sense if you want Adam to be
millions of years back. The only option that makes
>any sense of the figures and what we know of lifespans is (2). And that
puts Adam back at 4000 BC.

>Furthermore, the "gap" in genealogy theory can't apply to Noah (500 when
became father of Ham Shem and Japeth). They
>can't be distant descendents as they interact with Noah after the Flood
(Gen 9).

>Please stop ignoring my points, accusing me unfairly of "preferring the
bible to be false" and explain how you can reconcile
>your theories with the data given in the genealogies?

My comments along those lines comes from the incredible opposition I find
here on this list to any concept that anything in Genesis should have any
factual/verifiable basis. It also comes from the time I asked one guy if he
wanted me to be wrong and he said, yes because I don't think the Bible can
be factually true. At every juncture here, people oppose rather vehemently
the entire concept of any form of concordism. Pardon me for observing this,
but it makes me think that people prefer not to have concordism and that
means that they prefer interpretations which don't allow the Bible to be
factually true.

If I am wrong in any particular case, please forgive me. I also notice few
on this list other than maybe Dick, who actually wants anything in the
Genesis account to be true and verifiable. While Dick and I disagree on how
to approach the problem, he and I do share a fundamental concern that what
is happening is that the Bible is being removed from verification.

>(For my part I'm inclined to think the numbers are symbolic ( e.g. 777) and
don't correspond to actual timespans, but I'm guessing you're going to say
that means they're "false").

You would be wrong. That being said, I would ask for where in the world one
gets support for the the concept that 105 is a symbolic number.

Look, I want as much history as I can get. To explain everything is the goal
that I will never achieve. I can't and don't claim that everything is
historical, but that does seem to be the easy copout attack on my approach
which is used all too often here. It is an unthinking knee jerk IMO. If
someone in science told their boss that they want to do symbolic or
allegorical or accommodational chemistry, they would be ushered off the the
nuthouse. Maybe they are ending up in theology!

For those with a short-term memory, I am not referring to poetry. And if it
is all poetry, what is the point?

glenn
They're Here: The Pathway Papers
Foundation, Fall, and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
  

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Received on Sun Oct 29 19:48:28 2006