• Genesis Literal Ou Figurado En

The topic of whether we should take Genesis 1 to be literal or allegorical can be traced back for centuries. Some like to interject that recent s cientific discoveries in geology, cosmology, and biology have forced Christians to change their interpretation in order to find harmony with science. But, is this true? Some of the most well-known Rabi’s and church fathers throughout history have written about this allegorical interpretation– namely, 4th century Saint Augustine, 1st century Philo, and 3rd century Origen of Alexandria.Let’s set aside any other issues with taking Genesis 1 literally that don’t have to deal with scripture itself. There are numerous reasons why we should doubt Genesis 1 is a historical narrative. It’s not that we are reading an allegorical interpretation into the text (via eisegesis), we are reading the text and coming away believing it’s allegorical because that’s the only way it could internally make sense.First off, let’s look at the internal contradictions of chapter 1 if we take it to be a historical narrative. You have a supposed account of six ’24 hour days’ yet the sun was not created until the 3rd day which would make the first 2 days impossible or, at best, very improbable.

2 thoughts on “ Why Genesis 1 is Not Literal ” McFarvo May 26, 2015 at 4:41 am. This is all well-and-good given/assuming that the Bible is true/infallible (if it is not, then there is no reason to cling to it). The understanding of Genesis 1 by biblical creationists is that the events of Genesis 1 are a reliable, historical account of the creation of the world and humanity since they were divinely revealed by God to Moses (Exodus 20:11, 31:17–18).9 Because all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), it is trustworthy and authoritative when it comes to history, and thereby is trustworthy in the scientific inferences from that literal history (e.g., since the earth was created before the sun.

Some people at this point would interject that all you need for a day is to have “light” and “darkness” which were made in the first day, but this goes against the very definition of what a day is: “the interval of light between two successive nights; the time between sunrise and sunset” via. So, these first two days are either impossible or not 24 hour days.We can also look at Genesis 1:11-12 to see some uncanny things happening if this is a historical narrative. Genesis 1:11-12 states, “Then God said, “ Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.” Now, the reason this is odd is because this verse is implying that the earth “brought” these things forth within this single day of creation. Anyone that knows anything about plantation or gardening knows that it takes months for plants and vegetation to fully grow. This is problematic for the person who thinks these are 24-hour days.

How could these plants and vegetations “come forth” in 24 hours? One would have to appeal to some miraculous intervention by God for this to be so, but then that wouldn’t be taking the “literal” or “face value” meaning of the text. I think this is also a good argument that suggests the author wasn’t actually writing about literal days.You also have an internal contradiction on how God formed both plants and animals. For instance, Genesis 1:20 claims (KJV) that the sea “brings forth” the “moving creatures that hath life” yet, in the very next verse, Genesis 1:21 claims God supernaturally made every animal- “God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth.” There seems to be a contradiction within these two accounts.Secondly, lets look at the contradictions between the two creation accounts of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. In Genesis 1:24, we have man being created after all other animals.

Yet, in Genesis 2:18-19, we have man being created before all other animals. You also have a contradiction between the chronological order of how man and woman were made– man and woman being created simultaneously in Genesis 1:27, while in Genesis 2:18-22 you have man created first, then woman second.The contradictions alone should tell us to abandon the historical narrative view of Genesis 1. But, we can go further– looking into the literary devices used in Genesis 1 that can make a positive case for an allegorical interpretation. I’ll just quickly highlight a couple that standout:-the seventh day God rests as a pure act.

Meaning, God never actually rests which would be a metaphorical set-up for practicing the Sabbath.-the sun and moon are commanded to “rule” over the day and night (v. 2 thoughts on “ Why Genesis 1 is Not Literal”.This is all well-and-good given/assuming that the Bible is true/infallible (if it is not, then there is no reason to cling to it). However, what if you do not assume the Bible is true? What if the burden of proof is on us to prove the Bible is true? How we do respond to non-believers who claim that any problem in Genesis anywhere then invalidates the whole Bible, thus destroying Christianity?Had a discussion with an atheist. I was making the claim that parts of the Bible, including a lot in Genesis, is not meant to be literal. He claimed that’s eisegesis (not exegesis), the burden of proof was on me, I can’t use strawmen, I can’t appeal to ignorance, I can’t have confirmation bias, I can’t cherrypick what is literal vs non-literal to ad hoc explain/rationalize.

He claimed it was meant to be literal (challenge: prove him wrong), so every factual inaccuracy thus invalidates the entire Bible, thus destroys all biblical religion. He focused in particular on Genesis 1 where God made light before ever making the sun, which of course doesn’t make logical/chronological sense.I was primarily talking about genetics, biological evolution, saying that God had no good reason to spend time crafting a scientific manual explaining these processes & facts when they are largely irrelevant (and certainly non-essential) to the narrative of God, Man, Sin, Israel, Gospel.

Why explain “God made matter & energy, singularity, big bang, form stars, stars make elements, make planets, our star is the source of light & energy for our planet, formed over billions of years, life, speciation, etc.” vs the Genesis 1 & 2 accounts of creation.He then claimed that the burden of proof was on me to explain why God wouldn’t just tell the truth when it came to these matters. Why not say “I created the sun, which gives light to the Earth in the day” not all this weird out of order, highly figurative stuff.I conjectured that God thought His accounts to be the most suitable vehicles for delivering the truly important facts that 1) God exists, 2) God created, 3) Man sinned, etc. I guessed perhaps that the Bronze Age contemporaries held a paradigm that would make another explanation unpalatable, in addition to the monotheism. I don’t know why God did what He did. (He claims my assertions or speculations about “God/Master vs Man/Dog” or “explain it to an ant” or “the squirrel cannot fathom the blue whale” etc., but he rejects all “appeals to ignorance” or “God’s ways are a mystery to us”.) I pointed out his a priori assumptions of “God’s actions must be rational to us” or “our logic is infallible” or “if I was God, I’d do XYZ; God did not do XYZ, therefore God is not good or not real” etc., I pointed out the assumption that “one must always be literal when possible & as accurate to reality as possible always” i.e.

Poetry or figurative language is a no-no. He dismissed all of this.He claims that even 1 error in the Bible invalidates the entire religion. He can pick any place where God/author says/writes something that is not scientifically accurate & say “there! Wrong!” & the burden of proof is on us to explain why a god would lie/expressthingsthatway (after all, adults of the Bronze Age were smarter than children of today, yet children of today are taught science). If those people had the capacity to understand a truthful creation story, why use one that is so flawed/illogical/nonsense?Given his out-of-hand dismissal of any of my speculation (as well as any of my analogies, and ofc he won’t let go of any of his assumptions or framework behind his logic).

I told him, “hey, if it was not for the Holy Spirit working on my heart, I’d probably be an agnostic atheist too, man. We don’t choose what we believe. You’re swayed one way or another by things outside of yourself.” Of course, this is irrelevant to the argument.Anyhow, what are your thoughts? Why did God choose to write Genesis 1 & 2 the way He did?

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ – Genesis 1: 1There is no other book of the bible that can polarize people’s views quite like Genesis. There’s the side that believes that everything written in there is a completely literal account of what happened, and the side that believes that much of the book is symbolism or analogy and that the way things really happened may have been quite different, with both often holding that the opposite view is dangerous to people’s understanding of Christianity as a whole.

And of course, there are those who aren’t Christian who try and use Genesis as proof that the bible is completely wrong, because science says this can’t have happened as described. But is that true? Does the bible actually describe what happened in a way contrary to science? And is that description one of a direct, six day long creation by God and God alone?

There are a few things in the biblical text itself that make me think otherwise and I will be exploring these over the next few weeks. This first part deals with the first two days of creation and the creation of the land in the third. Now, into Genesis.Genesis 1: 3 ‘And God said let there be light, and there was light.’Seems simple enough, there was nothing, now light appeared. But what precisely is this light? All light we know now is an emanation from a source, travelling in a vector away from it, not just some vague cloud of luminescence. So what precisely would this light be, and what is it coming from? It could just be a luminescence from some random point, maybe from God Himself, or could it be a description of seas of superheated plasma and gas giving out light?

Genesis Literal Ou Figurado En

The big bang theory is in essence that there was nothing, then all the matter and energy in our universe today burst out from a single point and began rapidly expanding outwards, a giant explosion essentially. This matter was at the time filled with a tremendous amount of energy, and so it was all in a plasma state, immensely hot and releasing large amounts of light as it shed this energy. Essentially, the entire universe at this point in time was a sun. Even as it lost energy and spread out, the temperatures were still very high and the universe would have looked like a sea of light, until the matter all began to coalesce into various localized regions and begin forming the stars and planets.