Just been reading Genesis

Originally posted by Penguin
You may recall I mentioned considering stealing a bible from a hotel and was pondering the moral ramifications.

Well, I decided the ramifications would be minimal and easily waved away, so I 'alf-inched' it. I have now read Genesis up to 25-the death of Abraham and my initial thought is "Wow!".

Anyone care to discuss?

--- Penguin.

What did the hooker say when you reached into the draw and pulled out the Bible instead of a condom or dildo.... 😀

Originally posted by Rajk999
What did the hooker say when you reached into the draw and pulled out the Bible instead of a condom or dildo.... 😀

"Oh no, not another priest!" 😵

Originally posted by FabianFnas
"Oh no, not another priest!" 😵

Good one ... 😀

Originally posted by Rajk999
Good one ... 😀

please ignore the rather boisterous and humorous tone of these jokers, its an excellent book which sets a precedent for the rest of the entire bible. it contains the first prophecy which finds fulfillment in the very last book of the bible, it outlines Gods original purpose for the earth, which incidentally has not changed, and so many other good and interesting things, like the chronological sequence of events detailing the creation process which by all accounts seem to be scientifically accurate (watch this space things could start to get hot here)! so i am glad you are enjoying, perhaps if others on this forum could broaden their minds, they too may find it not only enjoyable but enriching as well!

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
...be scientifically accurate...

Now it is you who are the joker 😀

Not near to scientific...

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
please ignore the rather boisterous and humorous tone of these jokers, its an excellent book which sets a precedent for the rest of the entire bible. it contains the first prophecy which finds fulfillment in the very last book of the bible, it outlines Gods original purpose for the earth, which incidentally has not changed, and so many other good an ...[text shortened]... forum could broaden their minds, they too may find it not only enjoyable but enriching as well!

Maybe thats exactly what Pengiun thinks about genesis.

Did you ever read the The Book of Enoch?. It has a lot of interesting stuff that Genesis left out.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Now it is you who are the joker 😀

Not near to scientific...

lol, not only is it scientifically accurate, but i can prove it!

Originally posted by Rajk999
Maybe thats exactly what Pengiun thinks about genesis.

Did you ever read the The Book of Enoch?. It has a lot of interesting stuff that Genesis left out.

is this question intended for me, if so, i have read some apocrypha, but they are clearly uninspired and God in his wisdom has quite clearly left them out of the ancient record for this reason.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
is this question intended for me, if so, i have read some apocrypha, but they are clearly uninspired and God in his wisdom has quite clearly left them out of the ancient record for this reason.

The difference is the Enoch was referred to as a prophet in the Bible.
God could also have inserted a built in Strongs Concordance. Does that mean a concordance is not for you ?

Are you saying 'uninspired' means 'useless' ?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
please ignore the rather boisterous and humorous tone of these jokers, its an excellent book which sets a precedent for the rest of the entire bible. it contains the first prophecy which finds fulfillment in the very last book of the bible, it outlines Gods original purpose for the earth, which incidentally has not changed, and so many other good an ...[text shortened]... forum could broaden their minds, they too may find it not only enjoyable but enriching as well!

Sorry to dissapoint you Robbie but...

He creates day and night at least 3 days before any sources of light. He has day and night but no mechanism for generating them until day 4.

1-6 implies to me that the entire universe was water before he separated water from sky. I'm not quite sure where the land was in all of this.

1-11 says he creates plants with seeds, and fruit before he has created any animals to help in pollenation or distribution of the seeds (I suppose the seeds & fruit could have been changed to make use of the animals after they were created but it doesn't say so)

Later (1-4) he creates the Sun and Moon, the sun to rule the day (quite why I don't know because there was already plenty of light around from whatever source he created on day 1), and the moon to govern the night (although it is not actually a source of light, just a reflector, and only 'rules' the night around 1 week in 4).

Then it implies that stars are different to the sun where in fact the sun is just another star. No mention is made of the other planets. When were they created?

1-20: on the fifth day he does birds and fishes. Must have got a bit confused with penguins (I am personally a little annoyed at that)

Well there's page one. He clearly has not thought this through and is making things up as he goes along. Deep breath...

All the animals come after the birds on day six. Presumably at this point he fixed the plants to make use of them. He also remembered to adjust the geological record to deceive us into thinking it all happened very differently.

Lastly on day 6 he makes Man. Interestingly, it looks from 1-29 as though lions, tigers, scorpions, spiders, eagle, sharks, man and penguins were all vegetarians. Must have been a bit of a pain for all those body shapes perfectly adapted to carnivorous bahaviour to have to eat leaves. Very dificult when you have jaws that won't go side-to-side. I'm not sure what I would have eaten at all.

Other points -

He curses a serpent to crawl along on its belly! Got away scott-free it seems to me.

Why did he put those two damn trees there in the first place?

3-22 - "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and eat from the tree of life and live forever". So man is banashed (why not just remove the tree?). Is God scared of man? And how many gods are there anyway?

4-3 - What did Cain do that was wrong? This whole bit seems incredibly petty, cruel and lacking in forethought on the part of God.

4-17 - where did Cain's Wife come from? The only mention of anyone having any daughters is in 5-4 after Adam has Seth at 130 years old. Who did Cain marry? She must have been his sister but her birth, the first woman ever to have been born, is never mentioned.

I could go on but I am only 5 pages in and already it is rife with contradictions, inconsistancy, cruelty, intolerance and deception on the part of all the main characters, most of all God. This is why I said 'Wow!' in my initial post.

So far, it strikes me that Genesis is a mismash of stories with no internal consistancy and certainly could not be treated as any record of actual events. I think it was written by committee.

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by Penguin
Sorry to dissapoint you Robbie but...

He creates day and night at least 3 days before any sources of light. He has day and night but no mechanism for generating them until day 4.

1-6 implies to me that the entire universe was water before he separated water from sky. I'm not quite sure where the land was in all of this.

1-11 says he creates plants w s any record of actual events. I think it was written by committee.

--- Penguin.

why must you people put him to the test, dig this penguin my good man.

The First and Fourth “Days”

It seems that the earth had been established in orbit around the sun and was a globe covered with water before the six “days,” or periods, of special creative works began. “There was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep.” (Genesis 1:2) At that early point, something—perhaps a mixture of water vapor, other gases, and volcanic dust—must have prevented sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth. The Bible describes the first creative period this way: “God proceeded to say, ‘Let there be light’; and gradually light came into existence,” or reached the surface of the earth.—Genesis 1:3, translation by J. W. Watts.

The expression “gradually . . . came” accurately reflects a form of the Hebrew verb involved, denoting a progressive action that takes time to complete. Anyone who reads the Hebrew language can find this form some 40 times in Genesis chapter 1, and it is a key to understanding the chapter. What God began in the figurative evening of a creative period, or age, became progressively clear, or apparent, after the morning of that “day.” Also, what was started in one period did not have to be fully completed when the next period began. To illustrate, light gradually began to appear on the first “day,” yet it was not until the fourth creative period that the sun, moon, and stars could have been discerned.—Genesis 1:14-19.

The Second and Third “Days”

Before the Creator made dry land appear on the third creative “day,” he lifted some of the waters. As a result, the earth was surrounded by a blanket of water vapor. The ancient record does not—and need not—describe the mechanisms used. Instead, the Bible focuses on the expanse between the upper and surface waters. It calls this the heavens. Even today people use this term for the atmosphere where birds and airplanes fly. In due course, God filled this atmospheric heavens with a mix of gases vital for life.

However, during the creative “days,” the surface water subsided, so that land appeared. Perhaps using geologic forces that are still moving the plates of the earth, God seems to have pushed ocean ridges up to form continents. This would produce dry land above the surface and deep ocean valleys below, which oceanographers have now mapped and are eagerly studying. (Compare Psalm 104:8, 9.) After dry ground had been formed, another marvelous development occurred. We read: “God went on to say: ‘Let the earth cause grass to shoot forth, vegetation bearing seed, fruit trees yielding fruit according to their kinds, the seed of which is in it, upon the earth.’ And it came to be so.”—Genesis 1:11.

naturally, photosynthesis is essential for plants. A green plant cell has a number of smaller parts called chloroplasts, which obtain energy from sunlight. “These microscopic factories,” explains the book Planet Earth, “manufacture sugars and starches . . . No human has ever designed a factory more efficient, or whose products are more in demand, than a chloroplast.”

Indeed, later animal life would depend upon chloroplasts for survival. Also, without green vegetation, earth’s atmosphere would be overly rich in carbon dioxide, and we would die from heat and lack of oxygen. Some specialists give astonishing explanations for the development of life dependent on photosynthesis. For example, they say that when single-celled organisms in the water began to run out of food, “a few pioneering cells finally invented a solution. They arrived at photosynthesis.” But could that really be so? Photosynthesis is so complex that scientists are still attempting to unravel its secrets. Do you think that self-reproducing photosynthetic life arose inexplicably and spontaneously? Or do you find it more reasonable to believe that it exists as a result of intelligent, purposeful creation, as Genesis reports?

The appearance of new varieties of plant life may not have ended on the third creative “day.” It could even have been going on into the sixth “day,” when the Creator “planted a garden in Eden” and “made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food.” (Genesis 2:8, 9) And, as mentioned, the earth’s atmosphere must have cleared on “day” four, so that more light from the sun and other heavenly bodies reached planet Earth.

The Fifth and Sixth “Days”

During the fifth creative “day,” the Creator proceeded to fill the oceans and the atmospheric heavens with a new form of life—“living souls”—distinct from vegetation. Interestingly, biologists speak, among other things, of the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom, and they divide these into sub classifications. The Hebrew word translated “soul” means “a breather.” The Bible also says that “living souls” have blood. Therefore, we may conclude that creatures having both a respiratory system and a circulatory system—the breathing denizens of the seas and heavens—began to appear in the fifth creative period.—Genesis 1:20; 9:3, 4.

On the sixth “day,” God gave more attention to the land. He created “domestic” animals and “wild” animals, these being meaningful designations when Moses penned the account. (Genesis 1:24) So it was in this sixth creative period that land mammals were formed. What, though, about humans?

The ancient record tells us that eventually the Creator chose to produce a truly unique form of life on earth. He told his heavenly Son: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving animal that is moving upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26) Man would therefore reflect the spiritual image of his Maker, displaying His qualities. And man would be capable of taking in huge amounts of knowledge. Thus, humans could act with an intelligence surpassing that of any animal. Also, unlike the animals, man was made with a capacity to act according to his own free will, not being controlled mainly by instinct.

In recent years, scientists have researched human genes extensively. By comparing human genetic patterns around the earth, they found clear evidence that all humans have a common ancestor, a source of the DNA of all people who have ever lived, including each of us. In 1988, Newsweek magazine presented those findings in a report entitled “The Search for Adam and Eve.” Those studies were based on a type of mitochondrial DNA, genetic material passed on only by the female. Reports in 1995 about research on male DNA point to the same conclusion—that “there was an ancestral ‘Adam,’ whose genetic material on the [Y] chromosome is common to every man now on earth,” as Time magazine put it. Whether those findings are accurate in every detail or not, they illustrate that the history we find in Genesis is highly credible, being authored by One who was on the scene at the time.

What a climax it was when God assembled some of the elements of the earth to form his first human son, whom he named Adam! (Luke 3:38) The historical account tells us that the Creator of the globe and life on it put the man he had made in a gardenlike area “to cultivate it and to take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15) At that time the Creator may still have been producing new animal kinds. The Bible says: “God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man would call it, each living soul, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:19) The Bible in no way suggests that the first man, Adam, was merely a mythical figure. On the contrary, he was a real person—a thinking, feeling human—who could find joy working in that Paradise home. Every day, he learned more about what his Creator had made and what that One was like—his qualities, his personality.

Then, after an unspecified period, God created the first woman, to be Adam’s wife. Further, God added greater purpose to their lives with this meaningful assignment: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:27, 28) Nothing can change this declared purpose of the Creator, namely, that the whole earth should be turned into a paradise filled with happy humans living at peace with one another and with the animals.

The material universe, including our planet and life on it, clearly testify to God’s wisdom. So he obviously could foresee the possibility that, in time, some humans might choose to act independently or rebelliously, despite his being the Creator and Life-Giver. Such rebellion could disrupt the grand work of making a global paradise. The record says that God set before Adam and Eve a simple test that would remind them of the need to be obedient. Disobedience, God said, would result in their forfeiting the life that he had given to them. It was caring on the Creator’s part to alert our first ancestors to an erroneous course that would affect the happiness of the whole human race.—Genesis 2:16, 17.

By the close of the sixth “day,” the Creator had done everything necessary to fulfill his purpose. He could rightly pronounce everything he had made “very good.” (Genesis 1:31) At this point the Bible introduces another important time period by saying that God “proceeded to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had made.” (Genesis 2:2) Since the Creator “does not tire out or grow weary,” why is he described as resting? (Isaiah 40:28) This indicates that he ceased performing works of physical creation; moreover, he rests in the knowledge that nothing, not even rebellion in heaven or on earth, can thwart the fulfillment of his grand purpose.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
why must you people put him to the test, dig this penguin my good man.

The First and Fourth “Days”

It seems that the earth had been established in orbit around the sun and was a globe covered with water before the six “days,” or periods, of special creative works began. “There was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep.” (Genesis 1:2) At ...[text shortened]... hing, not even rebellion in heaven or on earth, can thwart the fulfillment of his grand purpose.

why must you people put him to the test, dig this penguin my good man.

Because we are constantly urged to read the Bible, so I am doing just that and posting my thoughts. Nobody specifies which version of the book. Surely there must be some recognised 'most accurate' translation.

The expression “gradually . . . came” accurately reflects a form of the Hebrew verb involved, denoting a progressive action that takes time to complete. Anyone who reads the Hebrew language can find this form some 40 times in Genesis chapter 1, and it is a key to understanding the chapter.

So these 'days' are 'periods of unspecified length'. Why do none of the English translations say anything like that? How can we take any knowledge from this work if what we read is not what is meant? If it is key to understanding the chapter, why is not stated? The book as published is deceptive.

Also, what was started in one period did not have to be fully completed when the next period began. To illustrate, light gradually began to appear on the first “day,” yet it was not until the fourth creative period that the sun, moon, and stars could have been discerned.—Genesis 1:14-19.

Again, I am not reading the original Jewish text. How many people have? All the versions I have say something to the effect of And God said "Let there be light," and there was light. The text implies instant creation of light. It seems religious texts are unique in the innaccuracy of translations.

Before the Creator made dry land appear on the third creative “day,” he lifted some of the waters. As a result, the earth was surrounded by a blanket of water vapor. The ancient record does not—and need not—describe the mechanisms used. Instead, the Bible focuses on the expanse between the upper and surface waters. It calls this the heavens. Even today people use this term for the atmosphere where birds and airplanes fly. In due course, God filled this atmospheric heavens with a mix of gases vital for life.

Is that what it says in the original language? Or are you interpreting a vague passage to try and make it fit current knowledge?

You say that 1-4 means that the clouds thinned to allow the appearance of the sun and moon on 'day' four. But again, the texts I am reading are pretty explicit in saying that the sun and the moon were created on the fourth 'day', not that they became visible on Earth then.

The Fifth and Sixth “Days”

are still described explicitely: he created the birds on the fifth day, before the land animals that we now know they evolved from. It's the wrong way round. Again, where is the translation that puts it the right way round?

The ancient record tells us that eventually the Creator chose to produce a truly unique form of life on earth.

I don't see any significant way in which we are unique, except that our brains have gained 'self awareness' and the ability to be introspective. Actually, even those abilities are not unique. Genetically, we are very similar to Chimps and indeed, we share the same 'Eve'.

Whether those findings are accurate in every detail or not, they illustrate that the history we find in Genesis is highly credible, being authored by One who was on the scene at the time.

I don't find them accurate or credible in any way at all. Not a single one of the statements in the Gideons Bible I am reading actually says what you say it does. What translation are you reading?

The Bible says: “God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them...

Not my copy it doesn't. Mine says Now the Lord God had formed all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Had, past tense. Again, you are obviously reading the correct, unambiguous version and I should throw my worthless copy away.

It was caring on the Creator’s part to alert our first ancestors to an erroneous course that would affect the happiness of the whole human race.—Genesis 2:16, 17.

Well don't you think it would have been kinder to give those two a chance instead of offering them a temptation he knew they would succumb to and then as 'punishment', consign the entire of creation to a life that, funily enough, is entirely constant with one in which God had never played any part whatsoever. I don't think he alerted them to it, I think he tricked them into it.

Shall we get on to the madness of the episode with Cain and Abel then? Or do you want to talk about the vegetarian lions and tigers first?

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by Penguin
[b]why must you people put him to the test, dig this penguin my good man.

Because we are constantly urged to read the Bible, so I am doing just that and posting my thoughts. Nobody specifies which version of the book. Surely there must be some recognised 'most accurate' translation.

The expression “gradually . . . came” accurately reflects a for ...[text shortened]... ant to talk about the vegetarian lions and tigers first?

--- Penguin.

dude what copy do you have, because there truly is quite a staggering difference as to accuracy of translation, i bet if its from a hotel that its a Gideons bible, no?

Originally posted by Penguin
You may recall I mentioned considering stealing a bible from a hotel and was pondering the moral ramifications.

Well, I decided the ramifications would be minimal and easily waved away, so I 'alf-inched' it. I have now read Genesis up to 25-the death of Abraham and my initial thought is "Wow!".

Anyone care to discuss?

--- Penguin.

I would encourage you to keep reading. And I would say do not be concerned with not understanding everything the first time through.


I would encourage you to come to the Bible not merely for knowledge but to quench your spiritual thirst and satisfy your spiritual hunger.

Practically any Thrist Store with books is likely to have a cheap Bible. You could probably get one for under six to eight dollars.

Its worth is priceless.