Oh golly gee! We're finally able to convert the Atheists to the one true religion!

You guess wrong. However - over the centuries and millennia, gods book has suffered some changes, so who is to say which particular version is actually the real word of god?

Gen 6:19 From all living creatures, from all living things, you must take two of of each kind aboard the ark, to save their lives with yours. They must be a male and female.

The NIV claims that the animals came to him, the NJV does not. Well, you've taught me a lot at least... I'll now go burn the worthless NJV.

Judging from this version, the onus was on Noah himself, and it certainly doesn't say they walked up to the ark standing in neat pairs, all friendly-like to each other. "You must take two..." How many of each did god 'summon'? It's daft..

god tells Noah he must take two, which implies there's either more than two of each that have been summoned, and Noah gets to choose the best lookers, or that the onus is on Noah to go get two of each. I guess god couldn't distinguish the sex of the animals, so he just summoned a whole bunch and told Noah to find out if they had bollocks or not. Why tell him he must take a male and a female if he'd summoned the bloody things? They already would be male and female, unless god is a twonk.

How do you know that? A book told you?

Why ask me? You're the one trying to simplify everything. I'm making the issue vastly more complex, whereas you're quite happy to agree with Visitors "he summoned them", garbage.

 

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My apologies.

How do you know that the Bible has changed appreciably? The Dead Sea Scrolls beg to differ.

If by NJV you mean New King James, try reading verse 20.

Yes. I know that the entire Bible is true by faith.

--Aaron

 

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Not a problem.

Well because in the version you told me about, the animals came to the ark in pairs, whereas the NJV, (as one example), doesn't say anything of the sort. As such, one of those books is in error. Furthermore, the dead sea scrolls are dated as being younger than the bible, and as such have no relevance here.

N J V vs New King James.

Something doesn't add up here...

Sorry, the concept of believing in something merely because I can, is alien to me. Can you describe this any better please?

Also I would be intrigued to hear your opinions on other ancient texts that make different claims regarding gods/floods and whatever else you could care to think of. Thanks in advance.

P.S You missed an important bit, that I do feel deserves some attention at least. You told me the animals came to Noah in their nice little pairs, ready and waiting with their boat boarding passes. Again I will ask why then god would say "You must take a male and a female.." Did god perhaps expect Noah to check the animals genitals to ensure god hadn't made any mistakes during the hard task of summoning 160,000 animals?

 

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I can't find a version that excludes the possibility of pairs of animals coming to Noah on their own. What is this "NJV?" I wouldn't be so quick to say a version is wrong, maybe the focus of the passage is a little different. And even if two versions of the Bible conflict, then couldn't one of them only be improperly translated? Hebrew to English translation is not an exact science.

I think you'll agree that the DSS are really old; I just meant that they testify to very little change across thousands of years, not necessarily all the way back.

Well, this sounds weird, but here goes. According to the New Testament, Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He's the third Person in the Trinity. The Spirit testifies to us that the Bible is the Word of God, among other things. Basically, it's not head knowledge, it's heart knowledge.

I really don't know much of anything about other Flood accounts. Sorry. Just off the top of my head, perhaps Noah's children told the story around the campfire a lot, and remember, soon after the Flood people were scattering all over the place, and it became just that, a story. Stories have a way of changing with the telling, but later people started beleiving it again. I don't know. But I still think the one in the Bible is true. It's been written down at least since Moses' time.

Well, again, I don't really know, but I have some ideas:

It's easier to do what someone tells you to do if you fully understand why you're doing what you're doing. Maybe it wasn't as obvious to Noah that the animals were going to repopulate the Earth as it seems to us. Remember, God was telling him to do some pretty strange things. Nobody had ever even seen rain, and God says it'll flood? People thought Noah was crazy for building a big boat.

Maybe it's a quirk of translation. I'm not a Hebrew scholar.

Maybe only the hard to find animals came two by two. Maybe Noah had to choose two goats from his own herd, and God wanted to be sure Noah didn't choose his favorite goats, Charlie and Sam.

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Actually if Noah owned goats, he probably took more than two, for food.

One more thought: the voyage of the Ark was designed to be survivable, not comfortable. I don't think it was easy or fun, but it got the job done.

Take care,
--Aaron

 

New Jerusalem Version.

All taken from the same source? Wouldn't that make one.. inaccurate, and thus wrong?

Yes, and it would be wrong. As you say Hebrew to English is not an exact science, I appreciate and understand that, but that leads to mistranslation errors, that are errors. If these two versions of the bible conflict, which one do you trust more? It might not seem important in most instances, which is fine, but because of these translation errors/differences, we already have a problem right here.

One says they came to him, the other doesn't.

 

'Godidit' is the easiest explanation of all, hence my skepticism. Near as I can figger, the truthful explanations have little to do with ease and everything to do with plausability, testability and verification independent of political, religious, sexual or national preferences. Phlogiston theory easily explains why combustible things burn. Problem is, it's wrong.

Regards,
mrmufin

 

OK, I hadn't heard of this version before now. It could be wrong. Or: when I was researching the question in some other translations, I came across a few that didn't say the animals came to Noah, but they also didn't say that they did not. Maybe it's something like that.

When I said "heart" I meant my spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it, not my blood pumper. Anyway, yes, it's a kind of feeling.

Alright, how about this: I'll read some more flood stories if you'll read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. It's at Amazon.
Or your local library might have it. I can't recommend it highly enough. It explains some things I've touched on far better than I can.

My mistake. Bad word choice.

Well, it was only an idea of mine.

Sorry, another mistake. Christians make them too.

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I stated that too strongly. The Bible does say in Genesis chapter two that God had not sent rain on the earth, but that a mist used to rise from the surface of the ground and water the whole earth. I think that that was the case in Noah's time, but that's just me.

Best wishes,
--Aaron

 

Hmm...

perhaps an example would help. You see, Iran was once trying to secularize it's government under a dictatorship. This caused a religious revolution. However, in other countries such as Al-Carabiyyat As-Sacudiyyah ("KSA"), they use a religious façade to prevent such revolutions. In other words, even though religion isn't really a part of their government, they say it is to prevent people from getting pissed off. :m:

 

Tsk, tsk, tsk (!, !, !)

Aaron, do you realize you're doing your fellow X-tians a disservice by saying you KNOW the Bible is true?

First of all, that statement runs contrary to many a datum you've likely left unturned, mostly historical (afaia-atm-iirc)

Then, you should confront the other countless data that don't run contrary to the Bible but rather render its truth suspect.

Who was it that wrote the Bible? If you know much about the Bible, you probably know the answer to that. What *didn't* make it into the Bible? Why? Because it wasn't "divinely inspired"?

If I write a biography for my best friend, does it have to be "divinely inspired" to be 100% accurate? Also, if certain crucial facts in my biography differed from other biographies of the same person written by his or her other close friends, wouldn't that make mine (as well as the others') suspect? Can they all be 100% accurate?

There are a couple of documents (the one I enjoy the most in Coptic) which are discarded gospels written by other apostles of Joshua. Why were they discarded? Because they didn't fit with the early RCC.EOC.++'s political agenda. You see, if Josh had a female disciple... well, that would just make him not-as-admirable. What if he'd kissed her? Oops. What if she was a former prostitute? Yikes. Why would such argueably crucial information have been left out of the other ("divinely inspired") gospels? Maybe they were jealous of her?

You see, it's wrong to think of the Bible as a single document. Rather, it's a few documents by a few people bound together with questionable motives.

:m:

 

does anyone here know how to tell the difference between a male and female, say deaths head spider, i bet noah couldnt
on the other hand, if God did create the universe out of nothing, im sure he could, and he could erase all hunger from the animals or whatever
so, we "simply" have to prove God right or wrong

 

soz, on my last post, replace "im sure he could, and " with "then"

 

Yes it could be. I find that a rather worrying issue for anyone who claims the bible is complete truth/word of god etc etc etc.

It doesn't say god doesn't wear a polka dot bikini... Would there be any precedent to say he does? If it isn't there, it isn't there.

Ok, I'll take a look.

Yes it does. However, that is right at the beginning, in the garden of eden. What we must also take into account is that the bible completely misses out any information regarding the 930 years between seth's first son and Noah's birth. The story of Noah then starts when Noah is 600 years old, which means one and a half millennia have past between the two chapters. Man had now been banished from the garden and would not have survived if there was no rain. There would be no vegetation for the animals, and no food for humans. I propose that one and a half thousand years without rain would mean every animal and person would be dead.

Gen 6:21 "provide yourself with eatables of all kinds, and lay in store of them, to serve as food for yourself and them. Noah did this.."

This is just as impossible a task as getting every animal on the planet. This one however, can't really be contested. It is quite clearly and distinctly up to Noah to sort it out, and no indication that the food walked along two by two.

All kinds of food... I wouldn't even know where to begin..

From Eucalyptus leaves for the koalas to bamboo shoots for the pandas. These are just two examples, but go to show the noah story as a fictional account of the flood story. I'm not denying that there was indeed a flood somewhere, (and the Ziusudra/Euphrates flood has a lot of backing for it), but the additions of every animal and completely global is nothing more than impossibility.

 

x_x;

Well... does anybody realize that my message is very relevant to the messages posted after it, yet it seems to have been ignored?

:m:

 

Man had now been banished from the garden and would not have survived if there was no rain
-------------------
The water vapor that went up from the earth and seas in the heat of the day, came back down at night in the form of dew.

Gen 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground

 

Out of curiosity, and just your opinion (nothing scientific - just why do you think sort of stuff)
1) Why is it, that the marsupials ended up in Australia?

2) It's interesting that New Zealand was (according to tectonic experts) last attached to Chile before breaking away and, apparently, through the millennia slowly drifted to where it presently resides – which is next to Australia. Ironic enough, some species of plant found in Chile are only also found in New Zealand. With the flood in mind - why do you think that is so?

3) What did the animals eat once they were let out of the ark?

4) Isn’t it ironic that Noah built the ark somewhere around Mt. Arafat and after the rains it came to rest in the same area? One would think that it may have floated somewhere farther away?

5) Not unsurprisingly, there appears to be a number of civilizations near rivers and waterways, similarly many civilizations appear to have flood myths (except for the Biblical one – which we’ll say is fact). The Israelites were once part of a greater civilization, Sumerian. Ironically the Jewish flood story is very very similar to the Sumerian flood myth. Why do you suppose that is so?

 

OK.

So where'd the water come from?

So how could a small family ever have gathered up the lumber required for that boat, even in 120 years?

So how did the submerged plants survive?

 

Visitor: I already covered this issue, in saying that this is mentioned briefly in Gen 2, before man is booted from the garden. It was even made with reference to before man had been made, which can be seen in the:

"..and there was not a man to till the ground".

It seems to have it's roots in Sumerian texts aswell, from the beginnings of the Enuma Elish:

1. When in the height heaven was not named,
2. And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
3. And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,
4. And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,--
5. Their waters were mingled together,
6. And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;

Etc.

It's a common aspect of 'creation', that everything was formed from the water upwards. It even has meritable attributes to evolutionary concepts such as us all starting off as pond slime, or all life coming from the sea originally, which is held in regard by many people.

What we cannot ignore, are the simple facts of life. Water evaporates in to the clouds, turns back in to moisture, and is then dumped by the clouds. It's a cycle, and there's nothing to suggest for the several thousand years before Noah, that things were any different. Sure, a god might have started off everything from the water upwards, but once water goes up, it does go down again.

What you're actually saying was... it rained. All you've done is changed the word rain to dew.

 

"Eucalyptus leaves for the koalas ", No-one went to or from Australia between the last ice age, and 1700 and something, all the koalas would have drowned, so would the Aboriginees

"It is quite clearly and distinctly up to Noah to sort it out, " there goes any hope the story had of being true