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How did ancient Jews view the book of Genesis
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godspell

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September 3, 2019 - 3:03 pm

FocusMyView said
I would challenge you godspell, to come up with any creation scenario that I could not fit into the Genesis narrative as well as the current scientific consensus does. 
1000 years before  a Moses would have written Genesis, and 2000 years before it was probably last edited, humans built pyramids of such scale and such exactitude that they are difficult for moderns to understand how they did such a thing. Humans did not lack the capacity to understand the sun was the center of a solar system and the earth was the third planet from the sun. They merely lacked perspective.
So there is no reason for the sun to be impossibly created on the fourth day in Genesis if it is supposed to be the message of the Creator. The earth rotating and circling the sun is 2nd grade science.
There was no reason to tell it wrongly, except that the writer did not know.  

 

I challenge you to rewrite this post to the point of moderate coherence.

Genesis is not science, and is not trying to be.

I do not think it is literally true, so I challenge you to learn how to read.  😉

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FocusMyView

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September 3, 2019 - 10:28 pm

Yeah. Wish I could have that one back, lol. Clearly I did not get the gist of what you were saying the first time. You are a little rough on us literalists though. 

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godspell

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September 4, 2019 - 1:30 pm

From a very old episode of SNL (but still younger than me).

Laraine: [on the verge of tears] Oh, Mr. Mike,you’re so cruel!

Mr. Mike: Well, sometimes you have to be cruel, Laraine.

Laraine: [thinks she understands, looks up at him] In order to be kind, Mr. Mike?

Mr. Mike: No, in order to be even crueler. Now, scram. Put an egg in your shoe and beat it. It’s closing time.

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FocusMyView

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September 10, 2019 - 1:17 pm

A bit from Philo, giving respect to the Essenes for the way they rigorously studied and interpreted the scriptures. The respect is given in the phrasing “emulate the tradition of the past…” It seems the highest regard was given to things or procedures that had a long past to them. OF course, given that Philo embraced allegory as useful, one can be critical the he would be the one saying the technique did “emulate the tradition of the past…”
“Then one takes the books and reads aloud and another of especial proficiency comes forward and expounds what is not understood. For most of their philosophical study takes the form of allegory, and in this they emulate the tradition of the past…”
Philo, Every Good Man is Free
taken from “Jewish Life and Thought” by Louis H. Feldman and Meyer Reinhold 1996 p.247. 

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