Re: [asa] The Barr quote

In light of all your comments, is it accurate to say the following?

Barr and "any professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class
university" believe that the authors of Genesis 1 fully believed and
intended a message of creation in six 24-hour days. With this, the typical
YEC agrees.

Barr & co. apparently would also believe the following with which the
typical YEC would not agree:
--the world was not in fact created in six 24 hour days so that the Bible is
in error
--the Genesis passage is humanly inspired but not divinely inspired
--the message that God created the world in six 24 hour days is not God
telling us what actually happened
--Genesis was written in 5th or 6th century BC by Hebrew scribes

If so, we have a curious situation:

the interpretation of a 6 24hour day creation is correlated with a view that
the Bible (or at least Genesis) is of recent (relatively) human inspiration
and origin, not God's message of truth to us.

the view that Genesis has an indeterminate (either long or no message of
chronology) is correlated with a view that the Bible is of divine
inspiration and origin, with Genesis written earlier, taken from God's
theological message to a Mesopotamian audience.

That's quite the opposite of what is normally claimed. Scientific evidence
of an old earth would be consistent with both of the above views (heads I
win, tails you lose) but the YEC position would pick and choose from each
one.

Randy

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun May 18 22:42:00 2008