quote:Originally posted by Jennifer:quote:To me creationism and science can co-exist, not make the other irrelevant. God uses scientific means to get things done
Then why not just straight forward "instructions"? Why all the "thou shalts" and all that stuff? Why not just plain english such as, "don't kill people", don't do this don't do that. In plain english. The reason is, the bible was written by people who spoke like that. No god told them anything. A god would have known we would "evolve" and would have used plain words to speak to us. The ones writing the bible couldn't imagine the way we live now, and there was no god to tell them. All they did was decide how they thought mankind should live, and wrote "scary stories" telling people what would happen if they didn't live that way. The bible is an old instruction manual for them. I imagine they wrote parts of it to "explain" the things around them they didn't understand. Ask a child to explain something and we laugh when they do. But until that child grows up and learns how that something works all they have is their imagination to explain it.
Actually Jennifer the actual instructions, from God, are more to that very form. The scriptures were brought forth, unto man, mainly in Greek and Hebrew text and form because that is the language of those who, we believe, God gave the information to and they then transcribed it using their own language.
The thou's and thou shalt's comes from a directive of King James to translate the original writings into "modern understandable language". Well the language of King James and of that day was with the thou shalt not and so forth. Today we have additional translations that have done exactly the same thing that the translators, for King James, did. We have those that have taken the original manuscripts and words and brought them into "today's" language and understanding using words in vogue today.
The New American Standard translation is most likely the closest and best translation to what the original wording of the text of the old manuscripts said. Versions like the New International Version (NIV) also translate the old manuscripts but concentrate more on translating the thoughts of the old text rather than a word by word translation. In other words to be accurate to the overall thought that was being expressed rather than getting every single word exact.
Originally, in Christ day, they had neither. The actual manuscripts or scrolls that were copied from the originals were kept up and opened infrequently and read from only at certain times. The translation came from those that did the reading, during those times. People would gather around, the priest would read from the scrolls and that is how people got the "Word of God". There wasn't Bibles as we have today. Word of mouth and second hand is how people were taught.
Today more people have access to God's Word than at any time before.