Now that I’ve started talking about the Hebrew Bible on the blog, I think maybe I’ll keep talking about it for a bit. Let’s start at the beginning. As in “In the Beginning…”
Lots of people know that (some) fundamentalist Christians insist the beginning was when the world was created “6000 years ago.” But most of those people don’t know where the idea came from. (It’s not stated, of course, in the Bible itself. If you find dates in the margins of your Bible, it’s because
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Question: Being a retired psychoanalyst, I have been reading Freud’s cases from a more distant viewpoint now. Freud has certainly had devoted followers, including me in the past, as well as what appears to be a life of legends and made-up theories. Do you think there is something about humans that leads to such a process of group think and devotion and faith? How does one separate the legend from the history? Thanks
I’m not quite following — are you saying that there are lots of legends about Freud and theories attributed to him that he didn’t have? As to group think, oh boy do I think it exists. It’s simply amazing (and increasingly amazing since it’s increasingly occurring) how many people are simply bamboozled into thinking something is true or something happened because they’ve heard it and “everyone” is saying it…. (As to serious scholarship on this: “Social memory” is an intriguing area of research, starting with Maurice Halbwachs)
I vaguely remember seeing 4004 listed in the marginal notes of my Scofield Bible back in the day. If Scofield said it, how could it possibly be wrong? 😂
exactly…
According to the Jewish calendar, which is supposed to start when creation began, this is the year 5786.
The 6000 years till the end fundamentalists, will have to wait another 214 years till the world ends.
Didn’t God put a rainbow in the sky after the flood as a sign that E would never again destroy the earth and its inhabitants?
I put some store in ordinary people’s spiritual experiences. A good number of people have reported near-death experiences, where they go to a place that is very much like what we would call heaven. These are very ordinary and regular people; a good half of them are not even believers. There is even an MD who wrote a book on the subject.
There is no waiting 1000 years or getting left behind or anything like that in these people’s stories. They are “there,” and that’s all there is to it. They still have their bodies, even though their physical bodies are still lying in the ER or somewhere else. They even seem to be wearing clothing.
Where does this leave the “only the elect get in” theorists and people like that?
God lives on the planet Kolob. Kolob rotates on its axis once every thousand earth years. Kolob revolves around its star (also named Kolob) once every earth day. Long days, short years. It all makes sense.
The late Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay on Ussher in which he argued that his book was a serious attempt to reconcile Biblical and Classical dates and that the short section where he calculates the date of the creation was little more than a jeu d’esprit. However in others of his essays Gould explains that early scientists in Ussher’s time had good reasons to believe in a young earth since they based their dating on the rate of sedimentation alone. It wasn’t until the development of Geology as a science that the true age of the earth became apparent.
Yup, that was his book on the Millennium. Fantastic.
Very interesting indeed. Speaking of dates, I am reminded of a Book I read a few years ago called a Shift in Time by Lena Einhorn. It roughly argued if you shifted everything historical in the NT up 20 years it lined up nicely with Josephus. Have you read this book or familiar with that argument? Would be curious to hear your thoughts about it.
I’m afraid I haven’t. Sorry!
Matthew Harrison Brady: the Lord began the Creation on the 23rd of October, 4004 B.C. at, uh, 9:00 AM.
Henry Drummond: That Eastern Standard Time? Or Rocky Mountain Time? It wasn’t Daylight Saving Time, was it? Because the Lord didn’t make the sun until the fourth day.
So, if we are talking about exactly 2,000 years after Jesus’ death, that would bring us to around 2030, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps that would be the perfect time to publish one of those books predicting the end times—especially in the American South. It might sell extremely well. Then, once the date has safely passed, you could simply disappear for a while and wait for the next profitable opportunity to predict the Second Coming.
Quite a business model, isn’t it?
Yes, a publisher proposed to me a two-millenia-later book on Jesus. If he died in 33 CE I still have plenty of time….
I was raised in a fundamental Christian home and when I found out there were dinosaur bones with radioactive carbon dating of 250M yrs; I thought there was a big mistake. As it turns out, fundamental Christians had it all wrong. As a result, after many years of searching for Truth, I no longer identify as Christian. I’m thankful Bart has helped many of us see the biblical world from a scholarly perspective.
Man has tainted the original message by developing it into nonsense. However the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount describe the inner traits, emotional habits, and relational practices that modern psychology identifies as essential for a flourishing, resilient, meaningful life.
They are not “religious rules.” They are a psychological profile of a healthy human being. So Yeshua was profoundly spot on.
Oh goodness, this brings back memories. Back in my school, we were taught that they reached the age of the earth using the ages of people recorded in Genesis and using Luke’s recording of Jesus’ ancestors. Add them all up and you get the age of the earth. And if you didn’t believe this, you better keep it to yourself. Haha.
Seems to me there are two indictments against people like Ussher:
First, he and others didn’t or currently don’t know Hebrew well enough to understand that Genesis story actually means “When god began creating… the earth was without form, void, etc.” It does not mean “In the beginning god created ex nihilo.”
Second, the Adam and Eve creation story uses ‘Cue Names’ to indicate it is truly a story. Adam or Adama means humanity. Eve means mother of. Cain means having or possessing. Able means dew or mist as in the dew that evaporates quickly, i.e. he is killed young. Seth means replacement. This is like an electrician being named ‘wire’ or ‘switch’ or a mechanic being named ‘wrench’ or a chef named ‘cook’. The original Hebrew hearers would have understood these symbolic meanings.
Without the correct linguistic and cultural context, people are being indoctrinated into believing a creation, complete with dates, that was never intended.
Actually, I think you are following my points quite well. Freud means everything to his large following, but reading him from a distance makes one wonder how in the world did this devotion happen? His cases certainly seem farfetched both in the case material and in the conclusions he deduced from this case material. Does something like this happen with most religions? In other words, is psychoanalysis very similar to many religions? The two books on Freud by Frederick Crews are a good place to start on this subject.
Yup, I’d say there are interesting parallels. I’d also say you can find similar kinds of things elsewhere — for some reason, the Zeitgeist at the time seems reasonable and in later generations it’s a bit hard to get your mind around people actually *thinking* that!
Start with construction of the First Temple beginning in 970 B.C.E. ± 20 years. 1 Kings 6:1 says that was 480 years after the Exodus. Exodus 12:40 says the Hebrews were in Egypt for 430 years. Jacob was 130 years old when the Hebrews entered Egypt (Gen 47:9). Then we get the birth of Jacob (Gen 25:26) when Isaac was 60 years old, the birth of Isaac when Abraham was 100 years old, (Gen. 21:5), birth of Abram (Gen. 11:26) and now we count backward through the genealogies to Adam and get, by my calculation, the year of The Beginning as 4561 B.C.E. ± 20 years.