Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Years

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morbo3000
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by morbo3000 » Tue Apr 12, 2016 5:44 pm

Some clarifications:
Dwight wrote: The Genesis creation story is a myth?
"Creation myth" is the genre of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Just as the book of Revelation is an apocalypse. Matthew is a gospel. Galatians is an epistle. There are other apocalypses. And gospels. And there are other creation myths. Understanding the genre helps interpretation.

It is unfortunate how modern culture uses the word "myth," because when someone uses it, it leaves the taste in the hearer's mouth that the speaker is saying the story is false. From wikipedia: "While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally, it does not imply falsehood. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true."
Steve7150 wrote: Duet 34.9 & 10 seem convincing as it specifically references Moses plus there are about 30 references to him as the author throughout the OT & NT. AS far as the NT references being reliable , it does not have to be inerrant to be reliable it only has to be true.
My point is in order to ascribe authorship of the Pentateuch in general, and Genesis in particular, to Moses, you need an external source. There is none. Duet. is an internal source.
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by steve7150 » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:33 pm

Steve7150 wrote: Duet 34.9 & 10 seem convincing as it specifically references Moses plus there are about 30 references to him as the author throughout the OT & NT. AS far as the NT references being reliable , it does not have to be inerrant to be reliable it only has to be true.


My point is in order to ascribe authorship of the Pentateuch in general, and Genesis in particular, to Moses, you need an external source. There is none. Duet. is an internal source.






And why do you need an external source? What you are saying unless I misunderstand is that external sources are more valuable then biblical sources? Also since there are about 30 references to Moses it would take some level of conspiracy to all agree there is some kind of benefit to fabricate Moses authorship, what could that benefit be?

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by backwoodsman » Tue Apr 12, 2016 7:09 pm

Paidion wrote:I'm well aware of Dr. Hugh Ross's views, and of course he discredits Dr. Humphreys.
Of course Ross discredits Humphreys because....... Humphreys is not scientifically credible and his ideas are demonstrably false? Or did you have some other reason in mind?

If as you say you're well aware of Ross's views, and you took the trouble to at least skim through the article, then you know Ross is only one of many qualified scientists who have thoroughly debunked Humphreys' "Starlight and Time" idea. And you know that includes some young-earthers, and that even Humphreys has abandoned much of it. No need to take my word for it, of course -- the article has many points you can verify yourself, and is thoroughly footnoted to make it easy.

I really don't get why folks keep promoting ideas that have been debunked and abandoned by their originator. It's counterproductive to getting to the truth, and it gives the impression that one is more interested in defending their present position than in finding truth.
Another consideration is that Einstein's relativity theory assumes that the speed of light is constant, and the there is a variation in the "speed" of time (for example that time slows down when one approaches the speed of light). However, some claim just the opposite—that time is constant and the speed of light varies.
I heard recently that the last as-yet-unproven prediction made by the theory of relativity was recently proven correct, as were all the rest. So, until there's a really good reason to do otherwise, I think I'll go with Einstein on matters such as this.

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by Paidion » Tue Apr 12, 2016 8:00 pm

Well, I am not qualified to bring forth an argument to support Dr. Humphey's theory in "Starlight and Time" but I disagree that his theory has been shown to be "demonstrably false". I once encountered an argument that claimed to "thoroughly discredit" Einstein's theories of relativity. I wasn't convinced of that either.
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by morbo3000 » Tue Apr 12, 2016 10:38 pm

And why do you need an external source? What you are saying unless I misunderstand is that external sources are more valuable then biblical sources? Also since there are about 30 references to Moses it would take some level of conspiracy to all agree there is some kind of benefit to fabricate Moses authorship, what could that benefit be?
I think my original point has been lost. The author of Genesis does not reveal himself by name. I don't think the meaning of the book changes whether or not Moses wrote it. It's just a tradition.

As far as external sources, The gospel of Matthew is also anonymous. The only way we have of attributing it to Matthew is by an external source: Papias, who is able to speak to the book as a complete volume. There are no external references, neither in antiquity nor the Bible that attribute Moses as the author of Genesis as a complete volume.

Again, I don't think it matters. I'm not trying to make a case. Just stating the facts.
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by mattrose » Tue Apr 12, 2016 11:19 pm

morbo3000 wrote: The gospel of Matthew is also anonymous. The only way we have of attributing it to Matthew is by an external source: Papias, who is able to speak to the book as a complete volume... I'm not trying to make a case. Just stating the facts.
Not to get us too side-tracked, but we should probably challenge your repeated assertion that it is a fact that the Gospel of Matthew is anonymous

It's actually not a fact, it's an assumption

As far as I understand, all the copies of Matthew that could possibly include a note on authorship, DO IN FACT include a note on authorship.

And there is essentially no disagreement on the authorship of Matthew for hundreds and hundreds of years of church history that I'm aware of

So for modern scholars to assume that the non-existent original was anonymous is a pretty faulty assumption in my opinion.

It is way more likely that it is not anonymous in 1 of 2 ways. Either it's author (Matthew) documented his authorship OR the author's audience was well aware of his (Matthew's) authorship. In either case, I think the whole idea that the Gospel of Matthew was anonymous is misleading, despite how oft-repeated it is.

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by morbo3000 » Tue Apr 12, 2016 11:39 pm

mattrose wrote: As far as I understand, all the copies of Matthew that could possibly include a note on authorship, DO IN FACT include a note on authorship.
I'm open to being proven wrong.

Which manuscripts are you talking about?
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by steve7150 » Wed Apr 13, 2016 6:26 am

I think my original point has been lost. The author of Genesis does not reveal himself by name. I don't think the meaning of the book changes whether or not Moses wrote it. It's just a tradition.










I think we will have to agree to disagree as Duet 34.10 says "But since then there has not risen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" and this alone seems compelling to me. Additionally I asked what the motivation would be to fabricate Moses as the author of the Torah (which includes Genesis) from the 30 or so references to him. I also asked why would external sources be more reliable then biblical sources? Genesis as you know is not just about the creation account, it has a lot of info about the Hebrew people and Abraham and about God and many other topics. Lastly I disagree that Genesis is just a tradition if you mean by that "man made."

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by mattrose » Wed Apr 13, 2016 11:11 am

morbo3000 wrote:
mattrose wrote: As far as I understand, all the copies of Matthew that could possibly include a note on authorship, DO IN FACT include a note on authorship.
I'm open to being proven wrong.

Which manuscripts are you talking about?
All of them. There are no anonymous manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew. If the papyrus or codex is complete enough to include a spot of the title, the title is there with the name Matthew.

2nd century
Papyrus 4
Papyrus 62

4-5th century
codex sinaiticus
codex vaticanus
codex washingtonianus
codex alexandrinus
codex ephraemi
codex bezae

What they haven't found is a single anonymous manuscript.

If the original manuscripts were actually anonymous (in both the sense that they didn't have an author-title and people genuinely didn't know who wrote them... then it is frankly AMAZING that people from all across the Roman world ended up agreeing to call it the Gospel according to Matthew.

There's simply no good reason to suggest that the original gospels were anonymous in any meaningful sense. It's just a bad theory that keeps getting repeated as if it hadn't already been exposed as false. Richard Bauckham summarizes...

"The assumption that Jesus traditions circulated anonymously in the early church and therefore the Gospels in which they were gathered and recorded were also originally anonymous was very widespread in twentieth century Gospels scholardship. It was propogated by the form critics as a corollary to their use of the model of folklore, which is passed down anonymously by communities. The Gospels, they thought, were folk literature, similarly anonymous. This use of the model of folklore has been discredited... partly because there is a great difference between folk traditions passed down over centuries and the short span of time-- less than a lifetime-- that elapsed before Gospels were written. But it is remarkable how tenacious has been the idea that not only the traditions but the Gospels themselves were originally anonymous."

Since scholars now recognize that the gospels are far more similar to ancient biographies than ancient folklore... and since ancient biographies were not anonymous... there is really no good reason to continue repeating the idea that the gospels were originally anonymous. It's worse than an argument from silence. It's an argument in the face of a lot of unison voices.

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by morbo3000 » Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:58 pm

mattrose wrote: 2nd century, Papyrus 4, and Papyrus 62
4-5th century codex sinaiticus, codex vaticanus et al
Papyrus 4 is Luke, not Matthew.

Papyrus 62 is fragmentary. It only contains Matthew 11:25; 11:25; 11:25-26; 11:27; 11:27; 11:27-28; 11:28-29; 11:29-30; 11:30.

I did a visual scan of the fragments. Ματθαίος is not in any of them.

Also, wikipedia dates Papyrus 62 as 4th century. Not 2nd. "The manuscript palaeographically has been assigned to the 4th century." I don't have the resources to fact-check that.

The later codex' that you list are only evidence for the church's tradition. They tell us what the church believed about those books by the 4th century. It doesn't tell us those traditions were correct.
There's simply no good reason to suggest that the original gospels were anonymous in any meaningful sense.
To clarify the phrase, anonymous means that the document itself doesn't identify its author. In Paul's letters, he said "I'm paul. I'm writing this letter to the church at corinth." None of the gospels do that. If Mark was connected to Peter, he could have said "I'm Mark, I knew Peter. These are the things he said about Jesus." Or John: "My name is John. I was Jesus's most beloved disciple. I was with him for 3 years. This is my story." The author never says "I'm Luke, I knew Paul."
What they haven't found is a single anonymous manuscript.
This is moot. We have no complete manuscripts prior to the 4th century. Either in support of Matthew's authorship, or its absence. Neither of us can prove that Matthew did or didn't write the gospel based on documents we don't have.

In the absence of internal evidence that the books were written by a specific author, the burden of proof is on someone who wants to claim a specific author. And all that can be said about authorship is based on Eusebius quoting Papias, and church tradition. If that evidence isn't conclusive, then we are left with the documents themselves. And their authors chose to not identify themselves.
If the original manuscripts were actually anonymous (in both the sense that they didn't have an author-title and people genuinely didn't know who wrote them... then it is frankly AMAZING that people from all across the Roman world ended up agreeing to call it the Gospel according to Matthew.
It's not amazing at all. It simply tells us what popular opinion was about the author of something written 300+ years prior. It doesn't denigrate the integrity of those who believed the tradition. But it also isn't authoritative.
Richard Bauckham: It was propogated by the form critics as a corollary to their use of the model of folklore, which is passed down anonymously by communities. The Gospels, they thought, were folk literature, similarly anonymous. This use of the model of folklore has been discredited... partly because there is a great difference between folk traditions passed down over centuries and the short span of time-- less than a lifetime-- that elapsed before Gospels were written. But it is remarkable how tenacious has been the idea that not only the traditions but the Gospels themselves were originally anonymous."
The motivations of the early form critics doesn't discredit evidence. Evidence is evidence. Either the author of Matthew said: "I'm Matthew, this is my book," or he didn't. He didn't.

The bigger question, though, is why does this matter to you? I'm not pushing an agenda. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Except that I want to let the Bible be what it is, and not what traditional views about it have said it is. And that seems to be a common theme for people on the board. Why is the traditional authorship of the four gospels so important to you?
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