And he rested on the seventh day (Isaiah 40)

Isaiah chapter 40 is supposedly (as the SAB notes) the beginning of "Deutero-Isaiah", under the scholarly assumption that the book of Isaiah was written by three authors. It's interesting to me to hear about this, as I had heard the theory of two Isaiah authors, but not three. The links given in the note outline this theory, but don't really get into the nitty-gritty of the details, however it's clear that the latter chapters of Isaiah talk about the exile and post-exile periods in a way that people take to suggest they are not predictive prophecy, but contemporary writing. I don't really have much of an opinion on this subject, although certainly there are people who feel strongly about it. Some Christians have noted that Jesus quotes from both the early and latter part of this book, and attributes both parts to Isaiah, but I don't think that's conclusive, as it makes sense that Jesus would refer to it as it is known, otherwise people would be confused. Maybe I'll revisit this topic later.

The SAB takes issue with verse three for the reason that in various places in the New Testament, it's taken as a Messianic prophecy, yet there's no real indication that it was considered so before John the Baptist. This is actually an interesting thing about the way the New Testament deals with Messianic prophecy that I think Christians need to be aware of: there's a lot of claims of fulfillment of prophecy by Jesus, but many of these prophecies are passages from the Old Testament that nobody considered to be about the Messiah. A lot of prophecy in the New Testament is along the lines of, "Remember this verse from the Scriptures? Yeah, that was about Jesus." This doesn't necessarily mean it's not real fulfillment of prophecy, but there's not a lot in the New Testament that's particularly impressive to an educated Jew. There are a lot of prophecies that are clearly Messianic that Jesus did not fulfill, and while the standard explanation is that Jesus will fulfill those at his second coming, most Jews aren't going to believe it until they see it. I don't know why this didn't come up when I was covering the gospels, but maybe it did and I don't remember? Anyway, the Christian view of prophecy is quite different the Jewish view.

I answered the question of whether everyone will see the glory of God in Isaiah chapter 26 where I pointed out that there's technically a difference in the wording between these two chapters that I think is significant. I'm not really clear on why the SAB marks verse six and seven as good, other than the fact that they're truthful. The next several verses wax poetic about how amazing God is, with verse 16 shifting to talk about how foolish idols are in comparison. The SAB makes a joke about Christmas trees, but I feel like Jeremiah 10:3-4 is a better passage for this joke. Verse 22 has the semi-famous bit about how God "is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth" that people like to quote as proof that the Bible knows the earth is round. I don't think it's particularly convincing, although it's possible that this is the meaning (the same Hebrew word is used in Job to refer to the sky, which is more obviously spherical). I once again rely on the fact that the spherical nature of the earth is fairly obvious if you watch a ship disappear over the horizon or see the shadow of earth pass over the moon during an eclipse. Verse 26 talks about stars, and while the SAB is right that new stars are created and old stars die out all the time, nonetheless none of them fall, although really, given the nature of stars, it's not really that profound.

Does God ever get tired? I'm actually a little surprised I haven't covered this one. I'm going to say the answer is no, so I need to address the "yes" section, I guess. I think I can say that except for the Exodus verse, these aren't really about getting tired. Saying you're weary of something that someone does repeatedly is really a figure of speech; you're not literally tired, you're just done with it and wish it would stop. So what about Exodus 31? I think the SAB gets that it isn't about resting, or they would have included Genesis 2:2; it's that Exodus says he was "refreshed", which would seem to imply he needed refreshing. And there's nothing ambiguous in the Hebrew, I think, because not only does the KJV always translate this word as "refreshed", but most other translations do as well. Still the word has the connotation of having air blown upon someone, and one of the translation notes I read unrelated to this passage suggested it means to take a breath. I think, although I admit it's probably not going to be convincing to the SAB, that it's more of a figure of speech, still meaning in essence to take a break.

Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns (Isaiah 34)

Okay, back to Isaiah chapter 34 for another end times prophecy, and it's a pretty violent one by the look of it, or at least the SAB marks it as such. I answered whether God gets furious in Isaiah chapter 27, and the answer was yes.

So, God here has fury on the armies of all nations, and slaughters them all. It's surely hyperbolic language, but the blood of this slaughter melts away mountains. Clearly this is a massive killing unlike any other with the probable exception of Noah's flood, so yeah, it's violent, but these are armies we're talking about, so it's arguably violence begetting violence. This is likely God protecting Israel from some sort of massive invasion.

Verse four has some interesting language that the SAB marks with the "Science" icon; and indeed, what is being described here sounds very scientifically unsound. It's pretty reasonable to assume "the host of heaven" refers to the stars, so is the imagery of them falling suggestive of a meteor shower? Possibly, but there is the matter of the sky being "rolled together as a scroll" and the fact that it says "all their host", suggesting the sky is essentially obliterated. While it's entirely possible that God miraculously causes the universe to collapse (because he certainly could), and that would sort of fit this description, we're talking about stars that are tens of thousands of light years away (if we're just talking about our galaxy--unfathomably more if the whole universe) collapsing on a time scale that would supposedly be visible from earth. I don't think I have any idea what this verse could reasonably mean! (I mean, it's been suggested by astrophysics that the universe could possibly collapse in on itself in a reverse of the Big Bang, but not only does current evidence suggest that won't happen, we're talking about trillions if not quadrillions of years.)

So the chapter goes on to talk about more violence, this time specifically mentioning Idumea (also known as Edom), but while God is definitely spilling the blood of people, it's apparently also animal sacrifices, as a number of animals are mentioned in verse six. (I don't know why the mention of the fat of sacrifices leads the SAB to talk about fat people, but it does.) Verse seven mentions "unicorns", verse 13 has "dragons", and verse 14 has a "satyr" calling to others of its kind. I talked about mythological beasts in the KJV in chapter eleven, where I said that most of them are questionable translations, a "unicorn" most likely being some sort of wild horned animal, a "dragon" being some sort of large, scary beast, and "satyrs" are probably wild goats. Yes, verse 14's "screech owl" is "lilith" in the Hebrew, which is sometimes considered something mythological, but the word only appears here in the entire Bible, so who knows what is meant?

Verses nine and ten talk about the land becoming burning pitch, supposedly forever (at least it's supposed to be free of people forever), although it goes on to say that various birds will come to live there, which I assume couldn't happen if it's on fire, so this is admittedly a bit unclear.

Bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt (Isaiah 30)

So we come to Isaiah chapter 30, which compared to many of the recent chapters is rather long and has a lot going on. It's not real clear who this prophecy is about, but I'm guessing Judah, and whoever it is, they're going to get into trouble for forming an alliance with Egypt. Isaiah declares that bad things are coming because the people won't rely on God, but on someone not godly, who I'm guessing is the person or persons who suggest the alliance with Egypt. Isaiah says that "the strength of Pharaoh be your shame", which possibly implies a lot of things, but probably the most important thing is later in the chapter way down in verse 22 we see that for a time they turn to idols.

Now let's talk about the "fiery flying serpent," shall we? Once again, the Hebrew word for "fiery serpent" is "seraph" and this time we get the adjective "uph" which generally is translated "flying" but does have other shades of meaning, but none that make any more sense when applied to serpents. In fact, even though the concept of flying serpents is rather preposterous, pretty much every translation I looked at uses the same exact phrase as the KJV except for the NIV, which gives us "darting snakes" which sounds more reasonable, and may be correct; while there are no known snakes that fly, I do believe there exist ones that launch themselves into the air when striking. One commentary I looked at suggested there is a species of snake that launches itself from a tree when striking; I don't know about what sort of snakes live in the Middle East. However, taking the plain words of the KJV, we'll have to chalk this one up to yet another mythological creature in Isaiah.

In verse eight, Isaiah is instructed to write this prophecy on a board or something, apparently to post it publicly in addition to writing it on a scroll, but as usual, most people will ignore it. Isaiah says that they ask prophets to not prophesy the truth, but rather pleasant things, and tell God "to cease from before us." God says that just being patient and waiting on him was the right solution to their problems, but instead they ran away. Starting in verse 18, the prophecy talks about how eventually people will start to turn back to God and be restored to sound teaching, and in verse 22, they throw away their idols, "as a menstruous cloth" which the SAB notes as both an issue of language and women. Now certainly it's pretty strong language, but I doubt even women are keen on holding on to used menstrual products, so it's subjective at least.

Now the SAB takes issue with verse 26 for scientific reasons, as it reads, "the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold;" the charge is, as usual, that the moon doesn't give off its own light (which as usual, I'm going to point out that that is not what is claimed here anyway), and the sun couldn't possibly be seven times as bright as it is. I think this is clearly end times prophecy, and there's something supernatural going on here; I'm sure astrophysics tells us that the sun couldn't--under normal circumstances--shine seven times as bright (unless it went supernova, in which case it would be temporary and the earth would be destroyed), but this almost certainly isn't normal circumstances. Also, if the sun happened to be seven times as bright, then it follows that moonlight, being reflected light from the sun, would also be brighter. The prophecy doesn't say how this brightness is accomplished, and as it may have been a vision, Isaiah may be only estimating the brightness as he saw it. (I expect a seven times brighter sun would be blinding!)

The rest of the prophecy talks in a lot of symbolic language about what God is like--which the SAB marks as absurd--talking about God's "lips...full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream..." Of course God, being a spirit, doesn't have lips, tongue, or even breath or an arm (as mentioned in verse 30), so this is all symbolic of something else, apparently according to verse 27, God's anger against evil. There is also symbolic language talking about "a bridle in the jaws of the people" which causes them to make bad decisions; it's unfortunately not very clear what people we're talking about, what the real nature of this metaphorical bridle is, nor what or who caused it, although with the SAB marking it unjust, there must be an assumption there that it's God's bridle, although I don't know if it's a warranted assumption. In the midst of all this talk of God's anger, verse 29 is oddly pleasant, with people happily following a flutist playing a song up to Mount Zion. And in verse 31, it talks about the Assyrians being defeated, which perhaps was the reason for the alliance with Egypt.

Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not (Isaiah 13)

There's a lot going on here in Isaiah chapter 13, much of which is marked cruel, unjust, and intolerant by the SAB. Once again, this chapter is about evil people seeing the results of their evilness, so it's questionable. So Isaiah talks about Babylon, which as I said in an earlier chapter is the empire that eventually pretty much completely destroys Judah. It's apparently rather violent, and Isaiah says they're going to destroy the land, whether that "land" is the land of Judah as a nation, or somehow destruction of the soil itself is not completely clear, but I think it's the former.

It says in verse seven that "every man's heart shall melt," which I notice the SAB doesn't mark for "Science" since hearts don't really melt; I'm never real clear on what gets marked with this tag and what gets recognized as poetic language. You have to wonder when the fact that Isaiah mentions moonlight ceasing triggers a "Science" tag, despite the fact that probably every culture--including modern scientifically grounded ones like ours--talks about moonlight and doesn't insist on calling it "light reflected off the moon from the sun." I think it's also pretty clear that, when Isaiah talks about God saying, "Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place," we're just talking about a powerful earthquake. I guess science and language are a funny thing sometimes.

So anyway, the war fought by Babylon is going to be brutal, not only will they kill everyone they see, including children, they will rape the women. Then for whatever reason, the Medes get in on the general killing action, this time attacking Babylon. Then, Isaiah prophesies that Babylon in turn will be destroyed, and the destruction will be so thorough that nobody will inhabit Babylon again. As the SAB points out, this is a prophecy that never was fulfilled; the Medes and the Persians defeated Babylon, but they didn't destroy it, but rather took it over. It's possible that this is a prophecy that is still to be fulfilled around the time of Christ's return, as the book of Revelation talks about the destruction of Babylon, but yes, this didn't happen any time in the past, and Babylon has pretty much always been inhabited up to the current day (it's in Iraq). Interestingly, Isaiah says that while there will be no humans, there will be satyrs and dragons! See my comments about this sort of thing in Isaiah chapter eleven.

That if a serpent had bitten any man (Acts 28)

Acts chapter 28 has something interesting in it: the "science" tag used in the opposite manner than I usually see it. Most of the time, it's on a miraculous occurrence saying, "Science says this can't happen!" However, this time it seems to be saying, "Science says this isn't a miracle!" Cool. (The other usual kind is there, too.)

So, soon after being shipwrecked, they find out that the island they're on is Malta. The people there are referred to as "barbarous" but kind, as they help out the Romans in many ways, including making a fire for them. When Paul gathers some firewood, a snake comes out of the wood and bites him. He shakes it off into the fire, and has no longterm effects of the bite. The snake is referred to as "venomous", however the SAB points out that there are no venomous snakes on Malta! (I assume Wells did his research, and take him at his word.) Nonetheless, the Maltese people apparently expect Paul to die from the bite, and when he doesn't, they think he is a god. There's no mention of Paul reacting to this as he did the last time this happened in Acts chapter 14 for some reason. Paul heals some people while they stay on Malta (the other instance of the "science" tag used in the usual manner).

Eventually, after some number of months, they manage to find a ship to take them to Rome. Along the way, they stop in a few ports, some of which have Christians which they meet with. Finally however, they arrive in Rome, where the prisoners are handed over, and Paul is jailed alone with a guard watching him. He calls to the leaders of the Jews in Rome and gives them a short speech. They say they haven't heard about Paul, but they do know about Christians, and how a lot of Jews speak against them, but they come back the next day with all the Jews of Rome to hear more. Paul speaks to the Jews pretty much all day, quoting scripture to support Christianity, and as is often the case, some believe, but many do not. Paul tells them he will preach to the Gentiles. Paul remains under house arrest for two years, and we're left hanging there, not knowing what his fate is.

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night (John 3:1-15)

John chapter three is mostly the story of Jesus having a conversation with Nicodemus. This conversation and Nicodemus himself are noteworthy, because in much of the Gospels, Jesus is seen in situations being in opposition to the Pharisees, but Nicodemus is "a man of the Pharisees". It's not commonly noted, but not all of the Pharisees were against Jesus, and at least two of them (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) performed actions indicating that they believed in him to some extent.

Did Jesus perform many signs and wonders? Yes, Jesus performed a lot of signs and wonders, he just refused to do any just for the sake of showing off. All of Jesus's miracles were performed because there was a need for them, but there were a few times when the Pharisees demanded that he do something on the spot to prove himself, and he refused. Of course, it's understood that the "sign of Jonas" was a reference to the prophet Jonah being three days in the belly of a whale; similarly Jesus would be three days in the grave. (Yes the latter "three days" is questionable, but I don't think this is the place for that subject.)

Must someone be born again to be saved? These discussions are always convoluted because there's a lot the Bible says on this subject, and a lot of subjects that are closely related. The specific issue of being "born again" is a particularly sticky point because John 3:3 is the only place in the Bible where the term appears, at which point it's not very well explained, and yet you'll find a lot of Christians who are very hung up on it. (Ask a Christian like that what it means, and they'll probably say something like, "If you are, you just know!") Nonetheless, how I would respond to what is touched on on the contradiction page is that being born again is believing in Jesus, and the SAB seems to understand that the point here is belief, as they group it together. The thing that seems like a sticking point is when the Bible talks about salvation through words and deeds; the solution to the confusion is understanding that if you have the right beliefs, you will speak the right words and perform the right deeds. A pastor friend of mine told me he teaches this subject with an illustration of a coin, where faith and beliefs are on one side, and good words and deeds are on the other; while they are two different things, they are just two aspects of the same state of being. This does open up a whole can of worms theologically with the question of which may be more important, and there are scriptures that seem to support either side, but I'm not going to get that deep here.

The SAB makes an interesting note on verse 8 about Jesus's statement "The wind bloeth where it listeth, and thou ... canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." I suppose in a scientific note, the SAB points out that it is quite possible to measure the wind. This is true, but I think what Jesus is saying still stands, even without the fact that methods of measuring the wind didn't exist in first century Palestine. Yes, you can tell what the wind is doing at a specific point in space and time, but just because that's possible, can you really tell where it's coming from or where it's going? Wind is very chaotic, and it's not visible, so you can't really have full knowledge of what the wind is doing in general. This article, which I just Googled and is very recent, talks about the technology used to measure wind, and how difficult it is.

"It's a demonstration of the feasibility for our future satellite mission we are pursuing where we hope to provide the 10-kilometer resolution," Zeng said.

The SAB has a lot to say about verse 12 in the footnote. it's a lot of science stuff linked to on other pages. Let's gather it up:

Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were created "from the beginning." But the universe is 13.8 billion years old, the earth 4.6 billion, and humans (depending on how you define "human") for a couple million years.

This comment is on a passage where Jesus is making a point about divorce by essentially quoting from Genesis 1. So, I'm guessing that the SAB is implying that Jesus is a young-earth creationist, which goes against modern science. Maybe, but just because Jesus is quoting Genesis doesn't mean you know what his view on creation is; Christians all accept Genesis as part of the Bible, but views on what it means vary greatly. Some believe in a literal seven-day creation that happened about 6,000 years ago; some believe that the seven days represent indefinite amounts of time that may be billions of years; some believe that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings, but the first ones to have a special relationship with God. I have a particular view that may not be widespread, but didn't originate with me, that I went over in Genesis 2. The point here is that I think the SAB is reading too much into Jesus quoting Genesis, and nonetheless, the first human beings in fact were male and female, which is what Jesus actually said in that passage.

Jesus believed the story of Noah's ark. He thought it really happened and had no problem with the idea of God drowning everything and everybody.

This is actually a pet peeve of mine. I hear a lot of Christians say, "Jesus says Jonah really happened!" just because Jesus mentioned Jonah being swallowed by a fish. Jesus knows his audience is familiar with the Old Testament, so it makes sense to use it as a common cultural reference; this doesn't mean that Jesus is necessarily saying it's all true. The SAB is doing the same thing here: if Jesus mentions Noah, he has to be signing off on the complete veracity of every single aspect of the complete story of Noah's flood! Again, this is a leap of logic that I don't think is warranted; at most, I'd say you can probably say that Jesus recognizes that Noah was a real historical person. It was my view going through that part of Genesis that the story is problematic scientifically and narratively; does that mean that Jesus, when making a point illustrated by the person of Noah, needs to pause to untangle all the problems of that story? Why would he? Jesus is making a point about urgency and danger, and illustrating it with the story of the flood; discussion of physics and meteorology would be a distraction.

Jesus is incorrect when he says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed. (Orchids have the smallest seeds.) And there are no trees in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).

The SAB is completely missing the point on two levels. Jesus's parable of the mustard seed is trying to make a point about something spiritual. His use of the mustard seed as "the smallest seed" is not intended as a scientific statement of fact, but simply that the mustard seed was likely the smallest seed any of his audience would have been familiar with. And it's important that his audience is familiar with the mustard seed, because they would have known that the idea of a mustard seed growing into a huge tree was absolutely ridiculous! Jesus doesn't think this is normal, he's implying that the kingdom of heaven defies expectations! So to sum up the footnote on verse 12, Jesus is only wrong about those things if you make entirely unwarranted leaps of logic based on things he said in passing in various places in the Gospels.

Has anyone ever ascended into heaven? You know, I'm inclined to give this one to the SAB. I mean, I could be nitpicky about the stories of Enoch and Elijah (the Bible doesn't actually say Enoch went to heaven, but if he didn't, then what the heck is the Bible trying to say?) and try to weasel out of this, but honestly, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why Jesus overlooked these two men. I guess I can say that Jesus is making a generalized statement that he failed to mention the odd exceptions to, but it feels like the wording should be different; it just feels so absolute. It's probable that his point is that no man has ascended into heaven and come back to talk about it, because that's certainly true, but his wording is technically a contradiction with other parts of scripture as the SAB notes.

This is getting long, so I'll break it at the famous verse 16, and finish this post with the footnote on verse 14. I'll say once again that just because Jesus uses an illustration out of the Old Testament, it doesn't necessarily follow that he takes the referenced story literally, however in this case, I don't see a reason why he shouldn't. The SAB marks the story in Numbers 21 as both absurd and having scientific issues, but we're talking about two miracles, so to a nonbeliever, any miracle is going to seem absurd and nonscientific. I suppose there is the issue of God making a miracle that hurts people and following it by a second miracle to fix the first; yes, that seems absurd, but I think the reason for what happened was to teach the Israelites something about faith. The snakes came because of lack of faith, and they needed to have faith in God's strange cure to deal with it. (The story has more issues, but I'll save them for whenever I get around to blogging Numbers.) The important thing here is that Jesus is comparing himself to the bronze serpent of Numbers 21, because like the issue of faith I described above, people of the world are subject to the effects of Original Sin because of the lack of faith of Adam, and need to be cured by faith in looking to Jesus lifted up on the cross to pay the price for sin. More on this in verse 16 next post.

My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves (1Sam 2)

1Samuel 2 opens with a little prayer by Hannah. Like many such passages, it contains a lot of flowery language that the SAB is going to take issue with. Note that this is poetic language; in taking the last point first, ("The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them.") the SAB labels this verse as violent, unjust and intolerant, but notably does not call it absurd. If we were to take it literally rather than poetically, it would be quite absurd. How many "adversaries of the Lord" in the Bible were literally "broken to pieces"? Generally, that doesn't happen to people. Also, to say that "he [will] thunder upon them" would, if taken literally seem to imply that thunder and lightning issue forth from the very body of the Lord, which is a silly image indeed (to my mind anyway; I'm sure to many skeptics, it's no more silly than a dozen other Biblical images). That being said, I'll grant the claims actually leveled against the passage.

But as to the previous two notes? "The Lord killeth" says verse six. Violent? Well, certainly sometimes. I think the sentiment of this verse (and really, the whole prayer/poem) is that ultimately, everyone's life is in God's hand. As for the claim that earth is set upon "pillars", well, I'd say that there's poetic license going on here, and in the similar verse of Job. Technically, the earth isn't set upon "nothing" either, but due to the forces of gravity, one could say that it's set upon an orbital path about the sun, or perhaps one could say that it's sort of set upon itself. In my mind, the point of talking about "pillars" is to establish a word picture of God building the earth as someone would build the biggest house in the world. Building a house is a big deal, but to the minds of these people, the earth was the biggest object in the universe, and God built that. "Wow", you're supposed to think; and really, the statement that it's built on nothing is also supposed to be a "wow" moment, because really, who else could take a huge object like the earth and just stick it in the sky and have it stay there? These statements are not scientific ones, but expressions of wonder in the place of full scientific understanding.

Hannah's story out of the way, the story turns once again to Eli and his family, particularly his sons. It's a terrible fact that no religion is perfect in its practice, and ancient Judaism here gives an example of its bad side. Eli's sons had a whole list of terrible things that they were doing, and I won't go into it, other than to say that pretty much everything said about them is bad. They were using their positions as priests to take advantage of people; God gave more than a few things over to the priests for their own use, but Eli's sons apparently wanted more, stealing food from the sacrifices and seducing women with their power. Eli is held accountable for his sons' actions, since he knew about it and did nothing (well, he gave them a warning, but that's about it; perhaps he should have done more). God sends a message that the day is coming that Eli's family is going to suffer, and in particular, his two sons will die on the same day as a sign. Sure, all of this is violent, etc., but think about the position that this family held in this case. As a priestly family, they were supposed to be God's representatives on earth. When priests start to do things that make God look bad, how is God supposed to deal with them, especially if they refuse to stop after a warning? Are we really to be more upset by a man having two wives that he tries his best to deal with fairly than a couple of priests who are stealing from people in the name of God and turning the Tabernacle into a whorehouse?

And the sun stood still (Judges 5)

Judges 5 is a familiar scene that we've seen before in the Bible, and we'll see again: Battle's over, and having won, the Israelites sing a victory song. Typical of this sort of thing, there's a lot of poetic language, some of which (such as fighting "stars") the SAB picks up on and criticizes, and some of which (such as God himself marching into battle) it does not. Anyway, my blanket response to most issues here is that this, being a piece of poetry, is not expected to be realistic nor completely accurate. Not that there is nothing that can be said beyond that.

So when God's marching into battle and mountains are melting, you might suspect that we're being figurative, but many of these figures of speech have some meaning behind them. Basically, most of what is going on here is a description of the idea that God was on the side of the Israelites, and therefore nothing could stand against them. This imagery could be the meaning of the claim that the stars fought against their enemies: the idea that when God is on your side, essentially all of nature is fighting for you. There may be another sense in which this is more literally true, however. It is common in the Bible for "stars" to be a metaphor for "angels", which answers a lot of questions. It may be in this case that they are claiming the battle was won with the help of angelic beings, which I know to some isn't much of an improvement, but it makes more sense than the idea of the battle being fought by flaming balls of nuclear plasma in space.

The song talks about Jael, and brings up the real issues that I addressed briefly in my last post. Jael is praised for murder here, and it seems odd, yet this was in the middle of a war. If Osama bin Laden were on the run from the marines and asked you to hide him, don't you think you'd at least consider killing him? Dying instantly in his sleep might be considered a mercy, as based on other cases where enemies were captured alive, you'd think much worse could have been in store for him.

Verse 30 may be a misreading on the SAB's part, but as in a few other places, it's hard to tell, as there is no commentary. The verse talks about dividing the spoils of war, including the conquered women. If you read it carefully in context, you realize that it is not a description of something that has happened, but a description of what the Canaanites imagine would happen if Sisera won.

The last verse presents two issues of a very different nature. First, the Israelites declare that they wish all the enemies of God would die. This does seem rather mean and intolerant, yes, but on top of other things I've said in the past about such topics, note that God Himself does not say that He wishes this, it's the Israelites saying these words, and for the umpteenth time, they're not exactly the apex of virtue.

Lastly, there is some poetic prose talking about "the sun...goeth forth in his might." Aside from being obviously (to me, anyway) more metaphorical, poetic speech, I think the SAB note is reading in something that is not there. The SAB says, "The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth." This may be so, I have little doubt, but it does not say so here. There is nothing about where or how the sun "goeth forth", only an observation that it does so. And while I think it is not an issue here, it's as good a place as any to reiterate that even in today's culture, in which we know that the earth orbits the sun (which technically it doesn't) it's perfectly acceptable to say that "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" even though, in fact, it is not the sun rising and setting, but the earth's horizon.

Am not I better to thee than ten sons? (Gen 30)

So, the baby wars are on.

Leah's got four children, and Rachel has none, and Rachel's apparently flipping out about it. The SAB notes, "Rachel considers herself worthless if she cannot produce children for her husband." While it's unfortunate, I think it's clear that it's a cultural thing, perhaps particularly in the ancient Middle East, that a woman did indeed consider a great deal of her self- worth to be measured by the number of offspring she could produce for her husband, especially male offspring. In any case, she starts getting angry at Jacob because she doesn't have any children, and Jacob's technically true but perhaps more than a little insensitive response is, "Hey, it's not like it's my fault, is it?" (But then again, maybe it is his fault?)

So Rachel comes up with the same solution Sarah did; she offers her handmaiden Bilhah to her husband. As Rachel notes, culturally the child would be considered to be hers for however these sorts of things work. This makes me wonder sometimes why Sarah got so bent out of shape over the same arrangement, especially since it was her own idea. Rachel seems to have no problem with it.

So Rachel gets two sons out of this deal, but this just leads Leah to get jealous again, so she offers up her handmaid Zilpah, who proceeds to also have two sons. While the SAB says that daughters never seem to come out of these unions, there is of course a daughter born in verse 21. Perhaps the intention of this claim is that no daughters come of these surrogate mothering arrangements. Maybe, maybe not. I wonder at times whether there may have been daughters that simply are not mentioned. Call it sexist if you will (and I might not argue), but the Bible rarely mentions daughters unless they're important to the plot, and Dinah is central to a story that comes up a few chapters from now.

Back to the action, Reuben, Leah's oldest, finds some mandrakes and gives them to his mother. Mandrakes are herbs that apparently have been considered by some to be either an aphrodisiac or they magically make you fertile, I can't remember which it is, maybe both. Now neither of these women is having children right now, so they both want to get their hands on these things, but Leah has them. So Rachel makes a bargain and says that Leah gets to sleep with Jacob if she gives her the mandrakes. But so much for the power of mandrakes, because it's Leah who ends up having another son, two of them, actually, and the only mentioned daughter. Finally after all this, Rachel gives birth to Joseph herself.

Now Jacob decides enough time has passed, and he tells his uncle/father-in-law that he wants to go back home. Laban, however, seems somewhat unwilling to let him go, saying that he knows God is blessing him for the sake of Jacob. The SAB notes that the phrase used in verse 27 probably is referring to divination of some sort on Laban's part, and I think that's probably correct. The Hebrew word behind the phrase is almost never translated the same way twice in the KJV, and most other choices by the translators reflect a concept of discerning by a spiritual method. He could be speaking figuratively as many modern Christians do (although they may not mean to be speaking figuratively) when they say, "God was telling me..." when something goes their way. Whatever the case may be, I'm not sure what the problem is here.

Jacob apparently cuts a deal and says that he will stay a while longer, but he wants to have a share among the flocks. He says he will take the sheep and cattle and goats that have certain characteristics, and leave the rest. This sounds fine to Laban, so he grants it. Then, another one of the stranger parts of the Bible: Jacob proceeds to perform some weird trick with the sheep where he shows them certain colors when they come to drink water, and they conceive and have offspring that are the desired color Jacob wants. Why this works, I have no idea. It certainly isn't the case that an animal's colors will be determined by the colors its parents were looking at when they were conceived. Genetics just doesn't work that way. The only thing I can imagine is that somehow these colored poplar rods have an aphrodisiac effect on the livestock, and when Jacob sees the right ones together that will produce the offspring he wants...? Who knows? I've never heard of anyone explaining what this is supposed to mean, other than the possibility that Jacob has a stupid idea that God, since He wanted to bless Jacob, makes work through a miracle. If that were really the case, though, I think the Bible would tell, as most miracles are clearly indicated within the text.

You win this round, SAB... ; )

A nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand (Gen 11:1-9)

The SAB starts the commentary on chapter 11 with a comment using the "Science and History" icon, the issue being that it is generally understood that varied languages did not appear in the world all at once, but gradually over time. Linguistics is an interesting study, and partly because my older sister had studied it in college, I've always had some interest in it. I'm not sure what methods are used to decide how old a language is; as far as linguistic history, most of what I do know is confined to a general understanding of how linguistic lineages are determined. It's fascinating to me the way that linguists can find the similarities that show that most of the languages of Europe, along with many languages of Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal all are descended from a common linguistic ancestor that probably was spoken somewhere in the Middle East. I've heard some people speculate that all these languages being related is a sign that the Babel narrative is true, and while I suppose it's a possibility, a big problem in my mind is the fact that Hebrew itself is not part of this language family.

While of course at the time of Noah, seeing as they were only eight people who were closely related, there probably was one single language, I do consider this first verse, along with others in this chapter, to be possible hyperbole. After all, the Bible does have a few cases of clear hyperbole: verses where it says "And so-and-so was the richest man that ever lived," or "And so it remained thus until this day." In the former case, one really can't make a claim like that without knowing the future; I tend to suspect Bill Gates has more money than Solomon did. In the latter case, it has to be understood that the writer is referring to up until the time he was writing the story, certainly not up until the time the story is being read, 2-3,000 years later. Getting back to the point here, I wonder if possibly not the whole earth was speaking the same language at the time of the building of the tower, but perhaps a large portion thereof. In any case, the time scale is not fully 100% clear on where this story is meant to fit into history. Also, as with the creation story, God may have made an appearance of many years of language evolution that didn't actually occur, but I can't think of any good reason for that, so chalk that up to wild speculation on my part.

In verse four, a decision is made by the people of Babel to make a tower to reach Heaven. Although the SAB objects on scientific grounds (I assume), the Bible at no point says that this is a project that has any chance of succeeding. (Although it would be impossible to build a tower that would reach to "Heaven" as in the dwelling place of God, I wonder if it would be possible to build a tower that reached into outer space, assuming you had unlimited resources. The meaning of "heaven" is not completely clear here.) While they may have thought that they did have a chance of making it, it's fairly clear that their real purpose is to create a sense of self-importance and notoriety.

So God comes down to see the tower. This is an odd passage, and the SAB places it and many like it on the page questioning God's omniscience. This is something about God that I can't quite fathom, frankly. Doctrinally, Christians and Jews understand God to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, but there are times when the Bible portrays God in ways that appear to contradict those attributes. In cases like this and Genesis 18:21, I believe the sense that's being conveyed is not that God does not know what's going on, nor that He's not already there in the plain of Shinar, but that since something important is going on, He's taking a moment to really fully turn His attention on it. While it's essentially figurative speech, I think there's a literal sense to it, as in the latter case, it appeared that God did physically come down to earth to deal with Sodom and Gomorrah. I suspect God was a physical presence in Babel as well.

So God does this because, as the SAB says, God is worried. However, He's not worried for exactly the reason that is cited. There is no threat to God, but there is a threat to God's order and plan for the human race. God intended the human race to spread out and cover the earth, and He did not intend them to become self-important. He notes that the more they all team up together, the more they can accomplish, but they're not accomplishing the things they were meant to accomplish. Thinking that they can get to Heaven simply by building a tower is a grave misunderstanding of the nature of Heaven and the personality of God. In a later chapter in Genesis, we'll see a structure that does reach from the earth to Heaven, and its significance.

So anyway, God figures that the best way to stop this building project and put a little humility in these folks is to make them all unable to understand each other. I actually recently had heard a sermon that touched on the subject that every time in the Bible that people find themselves against their will in the midst of people who are talking unintelligibly, it's a sign of God's disfavor upon them. Here, it's quite obvious that that's what's going on.

Finishing up this story, there are a few lingering questions about the nature of God. Whether God is singular or not is an item I already addressed, and won't go over here, since I think it was well-covered at that point. On the other hand, the SAB asks a very compelling question, straight out of ICorinthians: "Is God the author of confusion?" While I think I have what may be an adequate answer for this case, I have to admit in my weakness for honesty that I think the SAB could have bolstered its case with far more examples than this, such as ICor 1:27 (EDIT: I see the verse has since been added.) and a few choice O.T. passages in which battles were won by God confusing Israel's enemy. Those might be harder to deal with.

In one sense, there may be a misunderstanding of the passage in ICorinthians. The context is about people getting confused because they're all trying to talk at once in church rather than one at a time. Taking this into account, one might make a good case that God allows confusions for His enemies, but not for His children. On the other hand, dealing with this particular passage in Genesis, there are a few things worth noting. It can be said that these people were already confused. They were rebelling against God's wishes, which is not generally a wise thing to do, and they were attempting a task that was impossible. God didn't make them confused as much as change their confusion to another sort. It could also be said that the word here is not "confuse" but "confound", and while "confuse" seems to be a popular choice for translating this Hebrew word "balal", the KJV word choice is suggestive of something more straightforward; that is, that God didn't so much confuse them, but frustrate them. They probably still could get by, but it became much more difficult to deal with their neighbors and get things done on a communal scale. So they got the hint and quit the project.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations (Gen 10)

Minor point about the SAB's first note on chapter 10: this is actually the third genealogy (fourth if you count chapter one as the genealogy of the earth), after 4:17-24 and chapter 5 as a whole. The point is taken, however; Paul says to avoid genealogies, but the whole Bible is peppered with them throughout. I really don't know what this is about. My study Bible suggests the possibility that some of the pre-gnostic Christian cults were building strange doctrines based on obscure points in biblical genealogies, and Paul was warning not to take genealogies beyond their face value. They serve a purpose, but a very mundane one for the most part. I mean, could you imagine someone building some sort of bizarre cult based on some tiny little passage like IChronicles 4:9-10? How ridiculous would that be? (I've probably offended somebody; oh well...)

The SAB notes, as many others have, the mention of languages in verses 5, 20 and 31, and notes that this provides evidence against the story of the tower of Babel narrative in the next chapter. I disagree, and for similar reasons I disagreed with some items previously. It's always made sense to me that when the people were divided up into languages at Babel, they were divided by families, and so when the division eventually happened, these families migrated apart from each other and became nations, and so these nations were nations of distinct languages. I'll be honest though, and say that I do take the Babel narrative with a grain of salt, but mostly because I don't know much about formation of languages. There are thousands of different languages in the world today, and sometimes it's hard to imagine they all came from the same place. Still, I suppose if I can believe in something as far-fetched as the flood, this ought to be easy, right?

Verse 24 presents a true problem, at least, when you compare it to the genealogy in Luke. (Here's a suggestion for skeptics: maybe Paul said to avoid genealogies because if you really look into the genealogies in the Bible, it'll make you quite confused since they're occasionally hard to reconcile if you really read them closely. I did notice that the SAB catalogs a lot of these oddities and discrepancies.) Luke mentions some guy named Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah/Shelah, and you've got to wonder where he came from. One possibility is telescoping. Mainly I mention this concept because I've heard that many Biblical scholars explain most of the discrepancies in Matthew's genealogy by this phenomenon which the SAB notes on verse 17 in that chapter. In Hebrew, genealogies often are allowed that sort of flexibility, that a grandparent or great-grandparent can be called a parent, although it's odd Matthew tries to make some nifty magic number case by using this shorthand. I'm totally going on a tangent, here, though, because I don't really think this makes sense for Luke (although it's a distant possibility) because it would mean Luke (who wasn't even Jewish) knew some information about these genealogies that weren't in the Torah. That's highly unlikely. What's far more likely is that this is an error by some early copyist of Luke's Gospel, and perhaps he accidentally copied part of verse 37, which includes the phrase, "which was the son of Cainan," in it.

Only one more thing remains to comment on in this chapter, and that's verse 25, and this guy named "Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided". The SAB is right; I have heard creationists try to claim that this passage is referring to continental drift somehow. I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that continental drift somehow happened all at once just a few thousand years ago. It is far more likely that this is referring to the way the people of the earth were divided in the Babel incident. Peleg was likely born right after this moment in Biblical history, and was named by Eber (from whom some believe the word "Hebrew" comes) to commemorate the event.

What's up with this Nimrod guy? How come the SAB doesn't ask about him? That's a weird story, isn't it? Note that his name means "rebel", and he's the one who founds the city of Babel, which we get to in the next chapter.

According to all that God commanded him (Gen 6:11-22)

The SAB notes the supposed absurdity of destroying all living things to make the earth less violent. I'm not sure "absurdity" would be the right category, as it should be fairly obvious that without life, there is no violence and suffering. (Note that God's not the only one to come up with the idea of removing the source of the problem.) I think I do get the gist of what is being pointed out here, though, which is that the flood itself seems like a violent act. I don't know that anyone can deny that fact, and the best that anyone can do is suggest that the good of wiping out that violent and corrupt culture outweighed the violence of the act of wiping it out.

I was reading a philosophy book on the "problem of evil" the other day, and I realized that the theodicy that I tend to operate under is that since we (Jews and Christians) assume that God is omnipotent and good, and evil and suffering exist in the world, the only explanation must be that God has a moral justification for allowing evil to exist. One writer in the book who was talking about this concept claimed that it was a position that is neither provable or unprovable, which means nothing conclusive about the nature of God, but allows theologists in general a loophole to believe in a good and omnipotent God while still accepting that evil exists. Sometimes, I find it quite easy to see the justification behind what God does, but honestly not always. That doesn't mean that the justification is not there, though.

So now come some of the first of the scientific obstacles involved in this story. The SAB points out that a wooden vessel 450 feet long would be larger than any modernly-known wooden vessels, and most vessels of that size are very leaky and require support structures to hold them together. One thing that should be said in response to this (and it may make no difference scientifically, but it should actually be said in general) is that contrary to popular images of the "ark", there's no real reason to assume that this is a ship at all. A lot of Biblical scholars have taken the stance that this is something more akin to a barge, just a big wooden box sealed up with tar. Really, this passage must be a hard one for translators to deal with, as the Hebrew word for "ark" only appears elsewhere in Exodus 2, and the word for "gopher wood" is found nowhere else at all. (I thought it was rather funny to find that it's not even really a translation; the Hebrew word is actually 'atsei-gopher!) So we only really know the size, not the shape or the materials it was made out of. In the end, though, I'll honestly have to say that a lot of this has to be left up to God's hand on the whole matter, as I suggested way back a month ago. (If you didn't like that post, you're not going to like the rest of this one either.)

I'll actually be quite honest about all of this flood stuff, at least as far as I know the details, and I'm sure others who know more things will be more than glad to put them in the comments. The SAB notes the absurdity of an eighteen-inch square window in the ark being the only source of ventilation, but doesn't explain why. Have you ever been in a crowded room even with good ventilation? It gets stuffy. Now imagine an entire building that measures about 100,000 square feet stuffed to the gills with animals of every sort with only a tiny square window in the whole thing to give fresh air. It's not pretty.

Now, also contrary to popular view of the story, Noah is actually commanded to bring seven of some types of animals onto the ark in the next chapter. This is suggested to be a contradiction, and while it is confusing, I and many others tend to view the later instruction of "seven" to be a further specification, and something necessitated to allow for Noah's sacrifice in chapter eight.

There are a few interesting oddities to be noted about this, one of them being the concept of "clean" beasts before the creation of the kosher laws. Apparently the term refers to animals acceptable for sacrifice rather than acceptable for food, and Noah apparently knew which was which. The other oddity is one to give some fodder for the skeptics. Many textual critics of the Bible talk about the possibility that the Bible is actually edited together from multiple oral histories, and indeed, I believe it may be so. This particular story has a number of other much more subtle inconsistencies in the vocabulary that I wonder if a person would notice without having it spelled out for them? In any case, I'm admitting they're there, but I'll not go into details, leaving it up to the reader to figure out on their own or research elsewhere on the Internet.

The last hard part to swallow for this chapter is the final instruction to bring food on board for Noah's family and the animals. We find when we look ahead that Noah and all these creatures were in the ark for about a year. Let's take one animal: the elephant. An elephant apparently eats 150-200 pounds of food a day. Taken over a year, that's about 27 tons of food at minimum. Now we have two elephants (yes, I know there is more than one species of elephant, but there were at least two, and my point is that even using minimal estimates, it staggers the imagination) so double that and add drinking water, and then consider that 60 tons of food should eventually become 60 tons of elephant dung, and you see that just these two animals create a logistical nightmare. So I admit right now, without even going into further details that I could go into that this whole ark thing is physically impossible.

That said, let's get full Biblical context. I'll quote a couple verses.

And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. -Deuteronomy 29:5

For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah. -1Kings 17:14-16

The thing is, even without these verses, it should be fairly clear that if it's God's will that somebody would be able to get by for a long time on a little provision, then He will see to it that they manage to get by. Building the ark was a huge project, and it no doubt took Noah a long time to put it all together, but it was nothing compared to what God had to do to make it all work out. Why it was done that way, I do not know, but like many moments in the Bible, we see God asking a small step of faith from someone, and then He supplies the rest in a miraculous way.

God formed man (Gen 2:4-14)

A lot of the objections that are raised in the SAB in chapter two are repeats of the ones raised in chapter one, this is because they're largely concerning the supposed discrepancies between the two accounts of the creation of mankind. My progress has been slow enough already; I trust that nobody bothering to read this will mind if I don't bother with a second response, but rather move on to new material.

So, from 2:5 until the end of the chapter, the story is about the creation of mankind. I don't know which part 2:4 goes with; it could be the epilogue of the previous account, or the introduction of this account. I think it doesn't really matter. One thing that should be noted however is that 2:4 says, "in the day". This phrase is one of a handful that's poetic/figurative/whatever that I hope people won't misconstrue, and I'm glad to see that the SAB doesn't make that mistake here, at least. (Oops, it did, it's just in chapter one for some reason!) Often, "day" refers not to a specific 24 hour period, but a general timeframe, like when someone says, "You'll rue the day you crossed me!" They're not saying that there's a specific date on the calendar that you'll mark down and say, "Wow, that was a bad one!" but rather you'll remember the time that you did whatever you did, whether it be a single moment, or even a series of events that stretched across several years. Other words that have a common figurative meaning are "name" which often means character or reputation, and "world" which can mean humanity as a whole, the social system you are a part of, or even perhaps an era of time. Context will often tell you, but I won't pretend it isn't confusing at times.

In verse five, it says there is no "plant of the field" because there is rain and (essentially) agriculture missing from the picture. Aside from the thoughts I gave on this before, it might be noteworthy to think about the implications of there needing to be "a man to till the ground" and that this is referring to plants "of the field". Perhaps what this is saying is that there are specifically no plants like wheat and barley and other grains growing in a useful fashion. I don't know, but it seems like a possibility.

Note also in verse six that it still doesn't "rain", but instead a "mist from the earth" waters the ground. That's interesting. If you remember my goofiness about water canopy theory, I think it's interesting to ponder that perhaps it never had rained before Noah's day. That's pure speculation on my part, I admit however. That might make no sense in other ways I'm not even thinking of.

God makes the first man out of the dust. I've heard it pointed out by some theologians that everything that makes up a human body can be found in dirt. Interesting, but not really conclusive from a creation/evolution standpoint, since one would expect a creature evolving naturally by chance from its environment to take on characteristics that were consistent with its environment, if you follow me. In other words, if the earth were completely free from silicon, you'd hardly expect creatures made largely from silicon to have evolved, would you? That's another tangent, though.

After creating man, God breathes into him, making him a "living soul". I think there's meant to be a special implication here, that more than breathing air, we're somehow figuratively breathing the spirit of God. It's interesting that in Hebrew, Greek and English, the words for these concepts are closely related. ("spirit" vs. "respiration")

Then God plants a garden with everything the man needs to physically survive, including two special trees: "the tree of life" and "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." We don't hear much about either of these trees, although the "tree of life" pops up again in the Book of Revelation, chapter 22, where it grows on both sides of a river in New Jerusalem. This is interesting to me, because it shows once again the problem with taking things too literal. I once read a Christian commentary on the book of Revelation that mused, "What sort of strange tree will this be? Will it have a trunk that splits in two so it's on both sides of the river at once?" It seems obvious to me that in that passage, the "tree of life" is not a singular tree, but a kind of tree, and there will be several of that kind of tree along both banks. Does that mean that the "tree of life" in this chapter is not a specific tree, but a species, which may have had several instances in the garden? I don't know, but it's entirely a possibility.

Of course the tree we're really interested in so often is the other special tree (trees?), the one that causes all the trouble in the next chapter. Why would God put such a dangerous tree right next to his special beloved children and let them eat from it if it was so dangerous? It's a very good question, perhaps one of the best. I'm going to give it an entire post tomorrow.

The only thing left to comment on here is all the geographical information in verses 10-14. Strangely, this is a mix of places and names that are known today and not known today. What are we supposed to make of them? I think most likely, these geographical names are of very little consequence to us today. I suspect strongly that whatever they referred to no longer exists. The fact that some of the names are still used today is simply either a holdover from those times (Noah and his family named some places after the places that used to be there before the flood), or modern people labeling places with names they got out of the Bible. Either way, it doesn't matter much.

This beginning of miracles (Gen 2:1-3)

The SAB has no notes on these verses, but I wonder if we can pause for a moment and relax as God did after all of this and contemplate it over a nice glass of wine. I don't think it was ever stated in chapter one of the SAB outright, but it was implied that there is a big scientific problem with this whole week. Certainly everyone who is a skeptic knows it without having to be told. Here is the seventh "day", and we have to wonder as I hinted at previously what exactly does a "day" comprise of? Modern science teaches us that several billion years elapsed between the creation of the universe and the time the first man walked on earth. So is each "day" 24 hours, or is it some larger span of time?

Let's jump ahead about 4,000 years to a moment that is recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter two. Jesus is at a wedding feast, and a terrible faux pas has happened: the groom's family has run out of wine. Well, most of you probably know this one. Jesus takes six huge waterpots full of water and turns them into wine. A man at the party who was the first-century equivalent of a wedding planner compliments the hosts on the quality of this fine wine, not knowing that Jesus had just made it out of water.

The SAB has pretty much no comment on Jesus turning water into wine in this story. The fact is that, in a sense, it's not so very remarkable that he did it. I have a cousin who has the ability to turn water into wine actually, and he does it all the time. Of course, he's not as fast as Jesus; it takes him a little over a year to make a good wine out of water.

When the man tasted the wine and complimented its quality, do you think he pondered to himself, "This wine is good; it tastes like it was made in an instant from water a couple minutes ago!" Probably not. In fact, I'd venture that if you put Jesus' wine next to a regular wine, it would for all intents and purposes be impossible to tell which was the supernatural wine.

If God can create something in a second that usually takes a year or more to make, do you suppose He can create something in six days that "usually" would take ten million years to make?

Skeptics point to modern science and say, "We can see that there are stars more than 6,000 light years away, therefore the universe must be more than 6,000 years old. Therefore the Bible is incorrect." Sounds good, but remember this: God created light first.

Have you ever heard people ponder whether or not Adam had a belly button? Some say no, he didn't, because he had no mother. But if we consider Adam to be a normal man, he had DNA, and in his DNA, he had an X-chromosome; where do those come from? In every other man throughout history, it came from their mother. On this day, day seven, Adam was less than 48 hours old; ever seen a depiction of Adam with a bald head? It takes more than 48 hours to grow a full head of hair, so logically, he should be bald, right?

No, if you had cut down a tree in the Garden of Eden, it would have rings indicative of years it had not grown. Adam had characteristics of a normal man who had lived for twenty, thirty years or more because God made him complete. The night sky shone with light from stars thousands of light years away that had only come into existence two days before Adam himself did because God made the sky complete. What I'm saying is, can you think of any good reason why God wouldn't make a universe that had the perfect appearance of being over ten billion years old?

A lot of you have probably heard a form of this argument in people saying that the world was created with fossils already in place, or something like that. The standard response is, why would God want to trick people? Now, I'm not necessarily saying anything about fossils, but I'm definitely not saying God is tricking us. I'm talking about God creating a universe that is a work of art! If a painter uses their paints to make a picture of a landscape that doesn't actually exist anywhere but in their mind, do we say that they have intended to trick us, since the trees and the flowers didn't actually grow from seeds, but only appeared to do so? When an author creates an interesting main character, do we complain that that person appears to be a real human, but does not have an actual mother and father? God's making a work of art with intricate detail and fine craftsmanship, and if He doesn't have to skimp on the details, why should He? Indeed, why would He?

And why take ten billion years when He can do it in six days and have the same exact results? In the end, I don't think we really can know for sure, but given the fact that God is omnipotent, I see no good reason for a Bible-believer not to believe the world was created in exactly six literal days.

The living creature after his kind (Gen 1:24-25)

A quick note to give people something to chew on since I'm taking a day off tomorrow. Subject? Evolution. Once again, this is my own opinion; in fact, just about everything in this post will be opinion rather than dealing with what I would consider key issues of Biblical interpretation, so some readers who have criticised me for taking off on flights of fancy or "comic book stories" can just skip this and come back on Wednesday.

Most Christians, particularly those who are towards the more literal side of Biblical interpretation, see this chapter of the Bible as being anti-evolution. Generally, the idea is that since God created everything that ever was, there's no random biological processes that cause evolution to occur, whatever the term "evolution" happens to mean. I note that in my experience, when evolutionists and creationists are debating, one of the big problems is a lack of definition of terms.

More specifically, literalists lean on the repeated phrase "after his kind", as it is rendered in the KJV. Surely, the reasoning goes, this is an indication that every animal will give birth to an animal that is just like it, and not another animal unlike it. (Particularly, of course, that a monkey did not give birth to a human.) I think this sort of over-emphasis on a particular interpretation of the meaning of these words is a far worse offense than most atheists are prone to make in criticism. Most of all because evolution in its simplest terms--which has nothing to do with whether or not man has any particular ape-like ancestors--is something that you'd have to be very foolish to miss out on.

What exactly does "kind" mean here? A cat's going to give birth to a cat, that's clear and obvious. Does that mean that a cat will only give birth to a cat that's identical to its parents? That's also obvious: obviously false. Aside from everyday traits like color and fur texture, there are a host of other aspects of a cat that may widely differ from its parents. Most cats have 18 toes, five on each front paw, and four on each back one. When I was a kid, I had a pet cat that had 20 toes, five on each paw, and the front paws actually had thumbs! Somewhere in this cat's ancestry, there probably was a regular 18-toed cat, but this cat was different. It also had kittens that had extra toes. One kitten had 28 toes, seven at the end of each leg! I say each leg, because three of the four legs seemingly ended in two separate paws. (Look up "polydactyl" if you're curious. It happens in many animals including humans, but is very common in cats.)

There was an interesting belief among locals that the marshy conditions that existed in the area where I lived favored cats with oversized paws, and so such oddities were more common in that area. This may or may not have been true, but this sort of variation, along with classically-known stories like the peppered moth are simple examples of evolution in action. Before the creationists reading this deluge me with refutations of the peppered moth story (believe me, I've heard quite a few of them, including that the whole thing may have been a hoax), understand my point. Variation in colors of moths and variations in numbers of toes of cats are really no more shocking in many ways than variations in skin tone among people of the world, whom Christians believe to be descended from just two people. My point is that I don't think Christians should be afraid of evolution just because the party line is that it doesn't happen. Some of it, maybe a lot of it, actually makes sense, and in no way contradicts anything in the Bible.

Is the idea that humans evolved from monkeys somewhat offensive and anti-Biblical? Yes. But there are no real evolution-understanding biologists out there who actually believe that to be true. Really. You should check it out. Atheists reading this who think I'm full of crap should check it out with reputable sources, too. I'll probably catch a lot of crap for this post because I somehow wasn't completely precise in wording something, but hopefully some of you will know what I'm saying and not misinterpret it. I guess I'll see when I get back in a couple days.

Strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel (Gen 1:9-13)

(I notice in my traffic logs that a lot of people land on this post while Googling the title of this post. The point made in the post is an example of the concept, not an explanation. Just in case there are people looking for an explanation of the meaning of the phrase, I'm going to post a brief one in the comments below.)

There's not much to say about this particular section, at least certainly the first part. So the waters flowed together to form the seas, and left behind the dry land. There's nothing spectacular here; that's essentially the same thing that happens every time it rains. But then the plants arrive.

The problem here that is addressed by the SAB is that of photosynthesis. More or less immediately upon the formation of dry land, plants appear. (Something not addressed by the SAB that I personally find curious is the fact that of course plants also grow in the sea, and supposedly wouldn't have needed to wait for this process of drying out. Not that it's earth-shattering, but it is interesting.)

There is also a note that the Bible says in this passage (and others in this chapter) "let the earth bring forth", which may hint at the possibility of evolution. Sure, it's possible, but I think the more literal interpretation, and certainly the theologically conservative one is that when God says, "Let such-and-such happen," He's really giving a command. The fact that this one is worded slightly different from the ones we've heard before I think is simply a reflection of making something from something, rather than something from nothing. After the first day, it seems that God largely shapes everything out of existing materials that He created in verse 1.

But seeing as it's apparently the question on everyone's mind, what of photosynthesis? How do plants exist without sunlight? I have two thoughts on this.

First, why such an insistence on plants needing light? I understand there is well-established science that says this in essence, and in fact it was probably well-known to be a fact long before modern science. However, if God can make something out of nothing, why not make plants without sunlight? Or better yet, if there is no need to appeal to the supernatural, why go there, right? So forget this idea of plants miraculously needing no light for photosynthesis, and let's talk about the bare facts.

Once, I got my wife some tulips in a pot. You know, they were alive, and all that? Okay, so I brought these live plants home, and intended to give them to her for her birthday, but her birthday was a couple days away. So what did I do? Like I would do with any other present, I hid it. I stuck it in an unused cupboard in the kitchen, where it stayed in darkness for over 24 hours. Guess what? It was still alive when I pulled it out! It hadn't shriveled up and died from lack of sunlight for over 24 hours. Maybe I'm weird but I don't believe it was a supernatural miracle. Nor do I believe there was anything odd about plants needing to wait 24 hours for God to make the sun, so long as He made sure they stayed warm enough.

This leads to my second thought, which I lean on a bit more, especially since my line of reasoning in the last paragraph unwittingly led me here in the end. (I reason these out as I go along, so sometimes I surprise myself, actually.) Going back to day one, we ask the question once again; where is the light (and heat!) coming from if there's no sun?

Coming from a bit of a spotty background, I can tell you from personal experience that I have known people to grow certain plants indoors, completely away from the sun's light until the time that they wish to harvest their, um, crop away from the prying eyes that might come if their plants were left outdoors. Not just 24 hours, but a plant living its entire life without seeing a single ray of sunshine (and perhaps destroyed before being ever taken outdoors). This of course is achieved with artificial light sources. If God can make a plant grow out of nothing, why can't he make light out of nothing?

I find it interesting that some comments I have received elsewhere regarding my posts here have complained about my earlier request that people accept the Bible on its own terms and suspend disbelief regarding the nature of God, yet nobody brings up the point about how absurd it is that plants would be created where no plants had ever existed before. I mean, the Bible doesn't say, "God planted some seeds and they sprung up." No, God just told the ground to make plants, and it obeyed. And the skeptics swallow this camel-sized absurdity whole and say, "All the different species of plants in the world created in one day out of barren ground? Yeah whatever, let's talk about photosynthesis!" I guess sometimes it's the little things that bother you, you know?

Let there be a firmament (Gen 1:6-8)

Okay, those skeptical readers that believe that all Christians are wing nuts are in for a treat today, because day two of creation is where my personal beliefs are, I realize, more than a bit out there. Of course, my personal beliefs do not reflect the whole of Christendom, but I didn't come up with this stuff on my own, and when you get to an odd passage like this, you have to develop some sort of understanding.

The SAB lists this passage as an "absurdity", and I'll be the first to agree, but once again, we're talking about the miraculous, and the stuff that happens during the first few chapters here is largely outside of the norm for the whole of natural history. Many translations find different ways to fit an English term to this "firmament", but the essence of the idea apparently is that the Hebrew word raqiya in this context denotes the idea of a large solid object that's holding up a sky full of water. Yes, the world as described by these three verses is a big underwater dome. The atmosphere is made by creating an air bubble in an endless sea, held open by this undescribed structure.

My belief? There's a theory about the antediluvian age among many Bible believers known as the "water canopy" theory. The idea here is that God originally created the world with the ocean waters suspended in the air, holding in a warm, moist atmosphere. Supposedly, this accounts for a number of things which come to their end in the flood of Noah's day. People living long, healthy lives due to a clean, oxygen-rich atmosphere and lack of cosmic radiation; largely unchanging weather conditions (it may have never rained before Noah's day!); and, some believe, the coexistence of dinosaurs with humanity. While a lot of this sounds pretty bizarre and silly, suspending your disbelief regarding this suspension of water you can see solves many other Biblical dilemmas, thus its appeal.

For probably most people, however, this passage is taken to be poetic in nature. While the sky is most certainly not a solid object as far as we know (and given that we have traveled into space in modern times, it seems we can rest pretty sure about that) the concept of haraqiya as a "bowl" shape still has some appeal. After all, even after the flood the term is still used to describe the sky numerous times; and really, isn't the sky shaped like a bowl wherever you look at it from the ground? There's a reason observatories and planetariums are domed: it's the essential shape of the sky.

And what of the "waters above the firmament"? Well, those would just be clouds. If this explanation doesn't suffice to fit your concept of "above", then I would say wait for the fourth day, I'm going to take some time to talk about translation and prepositions. It should either clear things up immensely or convince you more than ever that I'm a crackpot. Either should be entertaining.

Remember also that when God calls the firmament "Heaven", that there is some vagueness to that word. In the NT, the Apostle Paul refers to the "third heaven", and is clearly talking about what we tend to think of in reference to the word "Heaven". However, this concept of "third" is important, as there were three heavens. The first heaven is the atmosphere, the second heaven is outer space, and the third heaven is beyond space, the place where God lives. Many translations render "Heaven" in verse eight as "sky", because the Bible seems to clearly be talking about the atmosphere.

The SAB makes an interesting note that God doesn't call the second day "good." No explanation is given. I don't find this troubling, only thought-provoking. One possibility that I like, being a believer in the "water canopy" theory, is that when God creates the world with this form, He's looking ahead to the day when all this water He has put in reserve will be used to wipe clean the face of the earth. He's not happy about it, but He foresees it coming, so He makes this water canopy with a heavy heart, so to speak. Who knows?

Let there be light! (Gen. 1:1-5)

Now it's time to dive in with some specifics, right? I'm tiring myself, and I don't know if anyone's bothering to read this anymore, if indeed anyone ever was. Well, one last semi-generalized note, actually.

Not everyone agrees on this, but it's my own personal opinion that chapter one is intended to be poetic. In many ways it's very poetic in form and feeling, and as such, I don't think it's necessarily intended to be taken as literal. The real point behind this chapter is the creative power of God, not the specific fine detail regarding what He does with it. That said, I do think one can take this chapter in a fairly straightforward way nonetheless, and a rule of thumb for Bible understanding is that if you can find a way to interpret it non-symbolically that makes sense, you should probably go with that.

The main thing that is taken as poetic by many is the concept of seven "days". Is a day 24 literal hours? Well, who knows? In a sense, a "day" is the period of time it takes for the earth to rotate 360 degrees relative to the sun's position, but of course the sun wasn't created until day four, so what does "day" mean in a more practical sense for those first three "days"? Who knows, indeed. I reiterate that the Bible is not a science textbook, and the technical specifics of the creation are not the real point of the story anyway.

On day one, God creates light. The skeptic says, "But if there's no sun, how can there be light? This doesn't follow our scientific understanding of the order things were created!" Point one: the sun is hardly the only possible light source in the universe. Point two: I'm not a physicist, but I believe that in fact this does follow the current scientific understanding.

What does science say presently about how the universe began? In the beginning, there was nothing; and by "nothing" we mean that not even time or space existed. You could say that it was "without form, and void". Then, all at once, there was something! What was that something? Essentially, it was a tiny little ball of energy, which exploded and made everything in the universe over the course of an extended period of time, supposedly over 10 billion years. At first, this ball of energy was so hot and charged up with power that it was unable to condense into matter of any recognizable form, but it surely radiated off one thing: light, and plenty of it. To say that light was the first thing created in the universe is, I would say, the one thing in this chapter that precisely matches up with modern scientific understanding. But I don't want to lose sight of my repeated warning that we're not really talking science here. The Bible doesn't say where this light is coming from, so we either speculate, or we let scientists figure it out.

On the poetic side again, the "light" may be a very symbolic thing. While I could speculate on how "God divided the light from the darkness" is flowery talk about how eventually that proto-plasma (Is that a word? I don't know what to call it.) at the beginning of the universe eventually cooled enough to settle into clumps of gas separated by empty space, I think it's much more worthwhile to talk about the imagery of light vs. darkness that pervades the Bible from beginning to end.

There's a fairly common belief known as "gap theory" that speculates on why God would create the heavens and the earth "without form, and void". (Once again, I think this shows a misunderstanding of the sequence of events; verse one is not an event so much as a "thesis statement," if you will, of the story that follows.) That theory is concerned with a pre-history that supposedly occurs in a gap between verses one and two. I don't know it well, but I believe the idea is that God made the universe in verse one, something went wrong that was somehow related to an angelic rebellion led by Satan, and the upshot is that God had to wipe everything out and start over: verse two.

Whether you choose to interpret things that way (and it's quite a bit of a stretch, clearly) or not, it's compelling to think of God creating a world which he infuses with "light" (goodness) so that he can separate and drive away "darkness" (evil). Really, that's what the Bible as a whole is about, so putting it right there at the beginning is interesting. As I have heard many a pastor say, while we tend to see the "day" starting with light and ending in darkness, the Jewish reckoning is that the "day" begins at sundown, thus starting with darkness and leading to light.

Then Israel sang this song (Biblical language)

Okay, one last post about context before I really start with specifics. Or at least I hope I'm done; I'll give myself the weekend to ponder the matter.

There are two things to keep in mind about the Bible as you're reading it.

First of all, you have to take each piece of the Bible as it was intended to be read. The Bible is full of different styles of writing, and each style has different purposes. The majority of the Bible is in four styles: historic, epistle, prophecy, and poem. There are others, I think, but this is what I remember off the top of my head. Type one is most of the Old Testament through the book of Esther, and the New Testament Gospels and Acts. Type two is the rest of the NT excluding most of the book of Revelation, and bit of the OT here and there. Type three is most of the OT after Song of Solomon, and the bulk of the Book of Revelation. The last type is scattered about here and there, but most of the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

Why are these so important to understand? Well, in particular, the last two types largely use symbolic language, and are far less likely to be intended for taking literally. Poems will use a lot of flowery imagery that one is not intended to take literally at all, while prophecy is often filled with bizarre images and personifications of nations and social concepts. When Daniel is seeing multiple-headed beasts rise out of the sea to spew filth from their mouths and cast nations into the bottomless pit or whatever, you're not meant to assume there is a literal interpretation of this probably 99% of the time. It's pictures of concepts with its own coded language that unfortunately isn't always easy to understand. In a poem, if the LORD holds the world in the palm of His hand, we need to know that God doesn't have a real hand, nor is anyone really holding the world; it's also a symbol, but usually one easier to understand, and not so deep in symbolism. I may get back to this subject in a later post, most likely when I get to passages of these types.

Secondly, despite what a few odd people seem to believe, the Bible is not a science textbook. One of the most well-known examples of this is Leviticus 11:13-19. Aha! the skeptic thinks, a bat is not a bird! Actually, it is, and this is why. I'll make mention of it when I go through Genesis 1, but in the system of classifying animals in the Bible, there are just a handful of catgories. If it swims, it's a "fish", regardless of whether it has gills, scales, flippers, etc. If it walks on land, it's either a "beast" or a "creature that creepeth," whatever that's supposed to mean. And of course, if it flies, it's a "bird".

While many of us are likely to scoff at this system of classification, one only need look at our own culture to see that we do the same thing. The most prominent place we do it is in nutrition. When we talk about foods, we classify them in a completely different way than zoologists and botanists do. Tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, and a number of other food items are fruit, but we don't call them fruit, because we think of fruit as a nutritional classification. I've actually seen diets that classify Coca-cola as a fruit, believe it or not! More specific to the sort of classification listed above, though, is the fact that we have things like "jellyfish" that are called by the name "-fish", but aren't truly fish in the technical sense. Generally, these and other things of a scientific nature are rather arbitrary and determined by culture, so we have to look at the information through the cultural lens of an ancient Hebrew.

Now, to leave a parting thought to contradict these two items in an odd way, I think it's interesting that the closest the Bible comes to being scientific is in the writings of Solomon, which happen to be among the most poetic of the whole book. Go figure. I'm sure I'll end up talking about that if I get to it eventually.