Your contention is, actually, debatable. When the Hebrews were wandering in the desert, they carried the Arc of the Covenant, within which, their God supposedly resided (at all times). Yet, two different manifestations of God, simultaneously led the Hebrews' course: during the day, in the form of a cloud pillar, and at night, becoming a pillar of fire. If one thinks of the Holy Spirit & God as being united, both as part of the same Being, that is really hazing the line between different manifestations of one God, co-existing in multiple places, and in multiple forms, at the same time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_fire_and_cloud
I would be interested in seeing your evidence, for the statement of yours, above, which I bolded. It is my understanding that, first, these stories of a Great Flood, exist all around the world and, second, there are many places that can be pointed to, where water levels rose up, at around 10,000 B.C. or a little before that, to claim lands that had been part of the ancient landscape. Or were you only saying that it was not as "sudden" of a change, as taking place over the span of 40 days? The story still points to a truth, in those rapidly rising water levels, at least from a geological perspective. And in some cases, this flooding would have been very dramatic, as when a great lake or sea of melting glacial water, breeched the edge of some natural retaining embankment, to spill over into a valley that was at a lower elevation, than that large body of water.
If you have some Hebrew texts defining or implying that as THE Holy Spirit. I'd like to read it. Else, it's not mentioned until Christians invented it as part of the triune.
The part that amazes me there is that someone stayed awake long enough to read the begats. What snore fest.
You either have the spirit of God in you or you don't. Having the spirit doesn't mean it had a name even then. I disagree that the Old Testament writers didn't know about the Holy Spirit. When did the Holy Spirit come, after Jesus or before? | NeverThirsty
Since we were recently on this topic-- aren't Jehova's Witnesses among those who believe that the Earth, itself, is only around 4,000 years old? My impression of Witnesses having this tendency to take things in the Bible literally, BTW, is why I had felt that your own info about JW's believing in a male Deity, was more likely correct, than was Overitall's claim. I'd been casually acquainted with the family of a JW landlord, I'd once had. And after I'd been visited by some, trying to spread their faith-- which led to my explaining my own, more pantheist views, to them-- I had an interaction with the youngish grandson, who had obviously heard about the new tenant's odd beliefs, that God was EVERYTHING. So, his interpretation of that, made him point at a wall, or a fence, and laugh at my thinking that it, was God. As I said: a very literal way of interpreting things. This seems especially relevant, because I am also aware of a quote in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus warns his disciples about those who will come after him, claiming that the Kingdom is drawing near. That passage ends with Jesus saying that, in truth, the Kingdom is already here, and it is all around them. I could imagine, then, this being the possible source of the JW idea, that this Earth, would be the site of "heaven." Do you know anything about this?
Your point about the "invention"of the holy spirit....... would be spot on......... These concepts have been "created" or invented by mankind..........as that is how they understood the history that is written in the bible. we might consider how one DEFINES the word God.............as if it is an energy form.......(everything is energy)............one might consider that God is a spiritual entity/ energy force.(creative and destructive)............and is really an IT............... Becasue we are dealing with an entity that cannot be seen..........smelt, touched, etc......(even in a "felt sense " type of way..)...one can interpret this entity in many ways.........as we have seen through the ages.
A lot of societies have had stories about massive floods, but certainly not all of them. As far a global flood and geology goes, I appeal, first, back to my early science classes, when we would shake up a bottle or jar of pond water and observe the layers that formed -- sand at the bottom, then silt, then clay, and the clay layer could take quite some time to form. The point being that there was hydrological sorting based on the size of the granules. A global flood would leave global, sorted bands like this. While there are bands in the sedimentary layers around the globe, they don't follow this pattern, indicating they were deposited by sequences of events over centuries and millennia, not a single global flood. Additional considerations are that there are sometimes seasonal pollen within these layers, showing gradual deposits over time, igneous layers between the sedimentary layers (again showing time between) and the sedimentary layers often show things like footprints, raindrop impressions, and animal tunnels between layers, showing they were deposited gradually over time, not in a flood. Long story short, a global flood would leave global geological evidence, and that just doesn't exist, which is why no secular geologist supports the idea.
I think it’s more like 7000 years but yeah they trace the generations back using the begats to try to position the start of the fall of man although they don’t say much about what happened before that. I have a timeline history of the world that is not produced by JW’S but uses the Bible timeline and it is pretty close to what they believe. I’ll see if I can take a photo of the early pages for you. It’s been a good 25 years since I last paid attention to their teachings. One of their most popular books was “you can live forever in paradise on earth.” It looks like they have it in web format now. I’m sure their eschatology is simply laid out there. https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/You-Can-Live-Forever-in-Paradise-on-Earth/ I’m sure you could find their Personally I was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist home. My parents were part of a group that considered themselves reformers when I was a teen. So they didn’t eat meat, my mom didn’t wear pants or makeup or jewelry during that time. I didn’t believe that stuff either but I had a pretty hungry mind as a kid so I absorbed a lot of what they were saying even though I think it’s contradictory nonsense. I don’t eat meat or dairy as an adult though. Back then I did though. There are a lot of similarities in the two faiths so it makes it easy for me to understand JW’s
So, as I had asked, you were not denying that these stories contain a mythologized truth, about the drastic change in water levels, at the end of the most recent cold stage, of our current Ice Age; you had only been arguing that the Biblical account was not literally, the way it had happened. I think that is well understood, even by many/most Christians, that some ideas are simplified, so presented in a symbolic way. For example, many Christians I am sure accept what science we have, around the formation of our current universe; as well as of the evolution of both our planet, within it; and of the life, eventually, on this planet, which ultimately led to the emergence of ourselves. IOW, I don't think most believe that it all came together, literally, in a week. I imagine that they (as did I, back when) think of it something like, what actually took billions of years, would nevertheless have only seemed as if it was just a week, to an immortal, Timeless Being, who was directing it. Or do you think that the way I'd interpreted the Biblical stories, had been atypical?
I don't deny that there could be some basis that is less literal at all. I just deny a literal global flood.
Sure, but that is nothing more than a feeling about something. A frame of mind so to speak. Like fans of a sports team. People have the spirit and root for them.
The book of Genesis describes the Earth as having a canopy of water over it. When the flood happened, this canopy of water came down. That is why Noah saw a rainbow for the first time. They had never seen the sun before. This is also why humans could only live to be 130 maximum after the flood but before the flood they could live up to 969 years.
It’s a mystery to me butI think that by the time Cain slew able there was already a large population of humans that end up mating with the angels by the time of the flood. These were the nephilim. By chapter 3, Cain was building a city. His wife’s name doesn’t get mentioned. I hope it wasn’t his mom. “But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 17 Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his sonEnoch.” I had to include verse 15 because that is where Avenged Sevenfold get their name from and they are one of my favourite bands.
Water is heavier than air. How did this canopy stay in place? Why did gravity not pull it down. That really is the problem with Noahs flood. Hydrology (Job 36:27-29) and gravity. Water drawn from the oceans as moisture. Cool atmosphere turns it to drops heavy enough for gravity to draw it to earth as rain. From there it goes back to the oceans via rivers etc. Low ground can be covered for a time - mountains not. The idea of exceptionally long lives is probably down to the various numbering systems used by ancient civilisations. Some used decimal system and so on through to at least the septuagesimal system - based on the number 60
There is nothing in the Bible that clearly states God is omniscient, but it's not unfathomable that His knowledge surpasses typical knowledge. For example, a doctor specializing in cancer could give you a more educated prognosis than others, based on his experiencial knowledge. God could exceed that doctor's knowledge concerning cancer and would know more about an outcome based on knowing it and the individual's specific medical condition. His accuracy would approach (if not meet) the 100% level of prediction. If you met someone that was that accurate you might think they were omniscient-- knowing all. We have limited predictive powers, but we're able to predict the weather for the most part. And some politicians predict when climate change will end our world. I forget when Al Gore said the end of the world would come.
