slug: some-thoughts-on-the-old-testament-christianity datepublished: 2016-02-12T04:53:10 dateupdated: 2017-12-30T07:47:00 tags: Life Thoughts, English Posts –-
Image: A part of the Dead sea scrolls
I've heard people saying religious people (not only christians of course) sometimes would put concepts that are bigger than a specific religion under the one that they believe in. For example, if take bible, say, the old testament, as a system or frame of world view (including its historic narration, prophecy and commandment), then people should be able to comment on this system with certain standards. But christian (again, many other religions' believers do this too) put the larger concept of a world view inside the religion and somehow be able to claim that: even though this part of the system is inaccurate, but other parts are perfectly correct.
Now, one obvious problem would be about the age of the universe; or in a more common way of saying it: when was the world created? It is made clear in the Genesis that the Deity spent 6 days to create the world. (I will explain why the argument of "day was not as long as now" in a bad argument in a second) Adam was created in one of those 6 days, then the Genesis has a series of long long who dies after years of creation and begot whom.... collected below (thanks to this answer:
Genesis 5:3 And Adam lived 130 years, and begot Seth Genesis 5:6 Seth lived 105 years, and begot Enosh Genesis 5:9 Enosh lived 90 years, and begot Cainan Genesis 5:12 Cainan lived 70 years, and begot Mahalalel Genesis 5:15 Mahalalel lived 65 years, and begot Jared Genesis 5:18 Jared lived 162 years, and begot Enoch Genesis 5:21 Enoch lived 65 years, and begot Methuselah Genesis 5:25 Methuselah lived 187 years, and begot Lamech Genesis 5:28 Lamech lived 182 years, and begot Noah Genesis 5:32 Noah lived 500 years, and begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth Genesis 11:10 Shem lived 100 years, and begot Arphaxad 2 years after the Flood Add all these up and you get 1,654 years from Adam until the Flood + 2 years and Arphaxad was born. We continue in Genesis 11:12 Arphaxad lived 35 years, and begot Shelah Genesis 11:14 Selah lived 30 years, and begot Eber Genesis 11:16 Eber lived 34 years, and begot Peleg Genesis 11: 18 Peleg lived 30 years, and begot Reu Genesis 11:20 Reu lived 32 years, and begot Serug Genesis 11:22 Serug lived 30 years, and begot Nahor Genesis 11:24 Nahor lived 29 years, and begot Terah Genesis 11:26 Terah lived 70 years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
The author summarized:
We have 1,654 years from the beginning (Adam) to the Flood, then 290 years to Abraham, then 1,680 years (give or take a week) from Abraham to Jesus. Jesus was born in 4 BC, so from then til now is 2,017 years.
Some clarification before continuing: the time in Genesis (especially the unit day used during the creation of the world) is very likely to be about the same length as our day today, some people argued that the unit day is much longer (so to fix the flaw); to me is totally nonsense.
Genesis 31: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
How can a much longer period (like a year) has "morning"?
Also, what is the problem with Sabbath if it's not only one day?
If you can spend a little time on Carbon Dating.........you know what I'm saying here. One surprise is that when I tried to Google Carbon Dating, one of the first auto-complete is carbon dating flaws I sincerely doubt if they researched before questioning.
Besides carbon dating there are tons of evidence that our world is much older than what the bible says (both from our own planet and outer space).
Of course, one argument is: "God has prepared every piece of evidence for you fool scientists to discover and publish and then go to hell". Okay, that's really cool. I mean, come on.
So here comes the second argument: "Bible should not be interpreted directly." I won't fight back this argument now as there are way too many explanation proposed by theologists. This type of "correction" seems to be the last defending of correctness of biblical history.
So why didn't christian community make correctness hundred years ago, I mean, after all, none of those fixation depends on new discovery in archaeology: they are more of literal interpretation change.
The critics would be, why religious organization always seems like making up mistakes after secular discoveries have challenged their idea? (heliocentric theory, evolution theory, age of universe, how long it took the world to form etc.) [1] and what does this fact say about the system or frame of worldview mention above?
Is it normal to trust a system that only fix problem found outside of it and insist that the rest parts are holy correct?
If any of the above content has factual or logical flaws, or I have missed anything and you happen to think it is worth to spend time on me, please leave a comment below.
not mentioning they tried to cover some of them ↩︎