For the background to this see
http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2008/06/genesis-re-writes-enuma.html
Dave Lankshear has written that the Babylonian Enuma Elish predates the Bible’s opening page by several hundred years and that the Jewish origin account was merely a reaction to this pagan myth. Dave writes that the “Enuma contains pages and pages of 'heavenly intrigue' and gossip and war-mongering between the various factions of Babylonian gods, but when we get down to it the creation narrative happens in roughly the same order... with some very interesting comparisons!”
Now, I have no disagreement with Dave’s thesis. I believe that his argument honours God and the Holy Spirit. His high view of Scripture will lead people to come to an understanding that the Bible is God’s direct communication to humanity and can be trusted for being a clear representation of God’s creative activity in this space-time continuum. However, I just wish Dave had completed his research a tad more exhaustively and seen that the Elish is also a reaction to another even earlier pagan cosmogony and its writer had, to borrow Dave’s phraseology, in fact “rebuked” the Gita, “turned it upside down using a similar literary device, but completely capturing it and transforming it in doing so.”
So, folks, come along for the ride and let’s see what the orthodox, theologically conservative Dave and his ‘intertextual reference’ theory can gain us from comparing Indian and ANE texts.
I’ll be quoting from first the (i) Enuma, then (ii) Srimad Bhagavatam, 2nd Canto, part 1:
1. Water, water, everywhere
Before there was anything, there was water. It was this water which held a potentiality for all that would arise.
(i) “When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained”
(ii) ‘Thus all the universes remained thousands of eons within the water, and the Lord of living beings, entering in each of them, caused then to be fully animated.’
2. The use of the god’s body to create the cosmos
(i) Then, standing over her body it says:
"While he divided the flesh of the ... and devised a cunning plan.
He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;
One half of her he established as a covering for heaven."
(ii) ‘From the Lord’s genitals originate water, semen, generatives, rains and the procreators…The back side of the Lord is the place for all kinds of frustrations and ignorance; from his veins flow the great rivers and rivulets, and on His bones are stacked the great mountains.’
3. The similar mention of vegetative life and the cause of their growth
(i) O Asari, [Marduk] "Bestower of planting," "Founder of sowing"
"Creator of grain and plants…who caused the green herb to spring up!"
(ii) ‘Lord Brahma said: The mouth of the…[Lord] is the generating centre of the voice…His tongue is the productive centre of different foodstuffs and delicacies…His smelling powers generate…all kinds of medicinal herbs…his eyes are the generating centres of all kinds of forms…[and are like] the sun and the heavenly planets…and His sense of hearing is the generating centre of the sky…the hairs on His body are the cause of all vegetation.’
4. The heavenly objects
The Enuma has clearly borrowed and then improved upon the Indian text because the same heavenly objects are mentioned.
(i) He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods;
The stars, their images, as the stars of the Zodiac, he fixed.
For the twelve months he fixed three stars.
He founded the station of Nibir [the planet Jupiter] to determine their bounds;
That none might err or go astray,
The Moon-god he caused to shine forth, the night he entrusted to him.
At the beginning of the month, when thou shinest upon the land,
When the Sun-god on the foundation of heaven...thee,
The ... thou shalt cause to ..., and thou shalt make his...
... unto the path of the Sun-god shalt thou cause to draw nigh,
And on the ... day thou shalt stand opposite, and the Sun-god shall...
(ii) ‘I create after the Lord’s creation by His personal effulgence, just as when the sun manifests its fire, the moon, the firmament, the influential planets and the twinkling stars are also manifest.’
5. Creatures
(i) The Enuma Elish does not detail the creatures being made at this exact point in the story but moves onto the creation of man, yet the first thing mankind does is talk about all the wonderful plants and animals their gods have made which places the creation of creatures somewhere about now — in retrospect.
(ii) ‘Beginning from me…the human beings, the birds, the beasts, as well as reptiles…trees’
6. The greatest god paid homage and his rule of the universe
(i) “Thou art most honoured of the great gods…Thy decree is unrivalled, thy command is Anu…No one among the gods shall transgress thy bounds…We have granted thee kingship over the entire universe.”
(ii) ‘The Vedic literatures are made by and are meant for the Supreme Lord, the demigods are also meant for serving the Lord as parts of the body, the different planets are also meant for the sake of the Lord, and different sacrifices are performed just to please Him.’
‘Thus when all these became assembled by force of the energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, this universe certainly came into being by accepting both the primary and secondary causes of creation.’
Comment: Well, not much except what’s good for the goose is also rationally acceptable for the gander: The claim that the Jews plagiarized a Babylonian cosmogonic myth because it has a few minor and logically obvious words in common surely must mean that any two culturally-diverse mythic accounts of the cosmos are also aetiologically linked for this very same reason of common objects and ideas.
However, another disturbing aspect concerning this argument is its anti-Semitic undercurrent. It’s disingenuously saying that the Jews weren’t even intellectually original but drew their cosmogonic account from someone else’s.
Furthermore, it is an odd proposition to believe that the Babylonians were capable of producing a partially accurate account of origins without any revelation from God. That is, when no witness was present, these pagans could rely on their own imagination to produce a putative semi-correct cosmogony.
There is a question that requires a response from these false teachers. Paul claims that all Scripture is inspired by His Spirit. So why would the Spirit of God depend on a polytheistic account of the universe’s origin and erroneously lead the vast majority of Christians to conclude that Genesis 1 was accurate chronology?
I would expect that the Holy Spirit has not done this. On the contrary, it is the god of this age which has led these false teachers to instruct others to look toward this pagan falsehood and worldview.
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24 comments:
But Dave it all comes down to why do you and your mates reinterpret Genesis 1 away from the plain reading? On what grounds do you say that the days of creation are not earth-rotation days as we experience today?
I just ask the question anyway, not expecting an answer. But I am psychologically prepared just in case you do!
All sounds OK Dave with your theory...so far.
But, Dave, when God directly says to Moses in Exodus 31 that HE created in 6 days was He just saying that He, in fact, was just copying the EE and that He didn't really do it in 6 days? Was God really just playing at being a literary theorist akin to people like our present postmodernist academics?
Dave I don't think you have answered my question. Maybe you feel you have and maybe I just don't follow it.
You seem to be implying that the EE predates God's creation. Obviously as a Christian I don't accept that, well aware that God created everything out of nothing, so His knowledge of His creation existed ages before the EE. We can also imagine that in time, as Adam's ancestors spread out that knowledge of God's creation account (passed on from generation to generation) became distorted into the fanciful stories of the EE. Evan the Australian aboriginals have creation stories which mix aspects of Genesis with fantasy.
I do not believe that anyone who is submitted to God would imagine that Genesis was inspired by the fantasies of the EE.
Also how do we know that Adam, created both adult, and speaking could not write? Quite possibly Adam and those following him kept family records, which Moses later edited into the Book of Genesis. Sounds far more likely to me.
But my question was less esoteric. As I read it Genesis is not poetry, nothing other than straightforward prose. Here is the first definition of what an earth-rotation day is, the same definition we use today. And as John points out God says he created in 6 of these days he commands that we work, then rested on the seventh day, a day just like he commanded His people to set aside for rest.
If (as you appear to be saying), the days of Genesis are not literal earth-rotation days then this command is nonsensical isn't it?
So I rephrase my question:
On what linguistic, or Scriptural basis do you say the days of creation are not earth-rotation days?
Keep it in mind that Jesus said man was made at the beginning of the creation.
I look forward to your reply.
Dave 'I asked On what grounds do you say that the days of creation are not earth-rotation days as we experience today?'
As you failed to answer the question I posed it again, with slight modification,to make it easier for you to comprehend. 'On what linguistic, or Scriptural basis do you say the days of creation are not earth-rotation days?'
How about having a crack at answering the question?
Dave quoting John Dickson won't assist you, rather the opposite.
I have read some of his writings and attended a talk he gave some years ago at Uni.NSW. I think underwhelmed describes the effect his waffle had upon me. He was like a one-eyed drunk attempting to blow a bugle in the dark. No clear note from him.
It was patently clear in his talk, and the answers he gave, that his fanciful ideas were developed to re-interpret Genesis away from its straight-forward meaning, away from what Jesus and the apostles understood it to mean. This was done so that mans unproven view of long-ages and evolution could be accepted. Man is the authority, not God. Heresy in istelf.
I think it truly outrageous the way you/they trample over Jesus and the apostles understanding of Genesis. And some are annoyed that we call this heresy! What blind arrogance is that! The Creator says man was created at the beginning of Creation but the AngloNasties one and all say-sorry you have it wrong old chap, we happen to know the world evolved over countless eons, with man appearing almost at the end.
Again you trample over God's word with your reinterpretation of the 10 commandments. Apparently, if you are right, when God said He created in 6 earth-rotation days, and rested the 7th E-R day, He didn't! Then this poor deluded god told the Israelites they should work for 6 E-R days (which weren't E-R days at all) and rest on the 7th day, the Sabbath, but glory bee this isn't a day at all, not an E-R day, not even an eon but a never-ending day! What convoluted baseless drivel is this Dave? And some bristle at being called heretics! If you are correct there is no such thing as a Sabbath day and the Jews have had it wrong for millenia. Maybe it was just mythopoeticalallegoricity.
Having beaten this commandment out of any recognizable form or clear meaning why stop there? Maybe you should get stuck into the commandment against adultery. I am sure there would be many 'Christians' who would appreciate some relief there! Maybe God really meant..... fill in the blanks to suit yourself and off you go.
You raise the old furphy of the never-ending 7th day!
Two things;
In the real world whenever we put a number with the word day we mean an everyday E-R day, don't we Dave? I say to you I will be away for 3 days, do you ask how long are your days? If you are consistent you should. In one place Scripture says the Israelites were to wash their clothes and abstain from sex until the third day when God would meet with them. If you are right Dave there could have been no Israelites left after 3 long unknown periods of time, could there?
Further how could the Israelites know when God was coming? Maybe because they already knew what a day was as God had long-before defined it.
2) By calling a day the 7th day, you are defining an E-R day as this meaning is already in place. It is tied to an E-R day, God having said a day had evening and morning. Note that after defining day as having evening and morning God no longer had to use that additional definer because he was for good reason confident that His creatures knew what he meant.
Also as there is no 8th day of creation why would there be a need to close with -the evening and the morning etc?
Why indeed.
Dave you quoted 'Having said this, there are aspects of the modern interpretation of Genesis 1 that only became possible in the 16th – 19th centuries, at precisely the time of the scientific revolution. This is no coincidence. The Renaissance and Enlightenment periods precipitated a literary revolution in parallel with the scientific one. This was a time of increasing sophistication in the historical-critical analysis of ancient texts in their original languages, and out of such analyses have come particular conclusions about the genre and purpose of Genesis chapter 1.'
I always have a laugh when I read such as this. Being a bit of a comedian I visualize your uninlightened ancient man, from creation to a later time wandering about completely unaware that Genesis and the 10 commandments were not to be taken at face value. Poor ignorant chaps they read His Word but totally missed the point. How could they know they would have to wait for thousands of years before enlightened man could discern the correct 'genre' of Genesis? Think of all the nookey they could have had, with those delicious Moabite women, had they understood that the 10C against adultery wasn't meant to be taken at face value!
At the same time we have your puny god of creation who wrote Genesis 1as though it actually happened, not meaning to give the poor morons this impression though, but unable to let them in on the secret. Right through the OT and right through the NT he sat back on his unending day of rest, never once giving a hint that Genesis 1 was other than historical fact. In fact he allowed his main players to say it was historical fact-never corrected them. He even allowed the messiah (obvioulsy a lower case messiah) to defend the historicity of Genesis 1. Despite the messiah supposedly being the creator he didn't know what happened having to rely on written reports which he also obviously misunderstood. He just wasn't smart enouth, not enlightened enough to see the joke. Poor sap is your jesus.
If this wasn't so serious it would be funny. I can imagine the whole story with lead characters such as Rowan Atkinson, Dudley Moore, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, dressed in teatowels and raincoats wandering about. I think I would cast Arfur out of Minder as your god. Your messiah- maybe Peter Sellers in his Inspector Cluseau guise, aweful French accent and all. May kemel felledd ofer as it het a bermp! It would sell well. But your equally commedic story just doesn't sell.
Am I showing disrespect of you all by writing this way? Not at all you are deserving of respect as creatures of God but your anti-Biblical, man-centred ideas deserve no respect, but rather the strongest condemnation.
Dave call it a rant if you like however to me, and I know in what frame of mind I wrote, I was having a laugh at the expense of the ridiculous story you guys tell. Its a dark comedy and should be treated that way.
Name calling? Calling you guys heretics? Only a succinct descriptive term.
You say God's Sabbath day, continues, it not being a day. However He gave the Israelites the 6-day working week followed by one day rest, using identical language in referring to His creation week and their living week. By your reasoning the Israelites have been resting from that day since. Nonsense.
You made no comment about Jesus saying man was made at the beginning of the creation (that in which we live) which shows the Creator rejects your story. I'll go with Him.
You quote John 5:17-19 to support the idea that God has rested since the end of His 6-day creation, but vs 17 has Jesus saying that God is at work. How can God still be resting but still be working? Your view is contradicted by both logic and Scripture.
If as you allow God used evolution to 'create' then death was in the world before sin while the Gospel is predicated upon death being the result of sin. You have it backwards and are therefore promoting a false Gospel.
BTW you have never answered my original question which was:'On what linguistic, or Scriptural basis do you say the days of creation are not earth-rotation days?'
Unless you are prepared to give a direct answer to the matter then you are right there is no point in further conversation.
Lankshear admits:
"Either way, human death is a result of sin."
What about Homo sapiens fossils "dated" to 200 ka, long before any biblical date for Adam could be stretched out.
"1. The continuance of God’s seventh day in Genesis 2:3 (i.e. the pattern established in each of the previous days does not recur and variations to patterns like this are usually significant)."
Significant because there was no creation on that day. Yet for the first 1800 years of earth history, no one saw this as significant for the length of the seventh day, which was a model for the Sabbath.
"This is reinforced by the idea that to postulate a day following the seventh undermines the finality of the rest."
What nonsense. The rest can continue, but this doesn't mean the day that the rest started on that continues. And the Sabbath command of Ex. 20:8–11 makes sense only if the seventh day was an ordinary one.
"2. John 5:17-19, here Jesus argues in such a way that it is clear that if God’s seventh day (Sabbath) was not still continuing then his point would be mute. In other words, Jesus does not teach that God’s seventh day was a 24 hour period of time."
Crap. This passage isn't even addressing the length of the seventh day, but making the point that God the Father is always working, so God the Son is also allowed to.
"3. Hebrews 4:3-4 also indicates that God’s Sabbath continues to the present."
Bull. As Kulikovsky concludes in God’s rest in Hebrews 4:1–11:
"The ‘rest’ of Hebrews 4 clearly refers to the Kingdom of God. This type of rest was alluded to right back at the time of creation, as well as at the time of the Exodus. Nowhere in the text is it equated with the seventh day of creation, nor is there any grammatical or contextual data suggesting any such equation. Thus, the progressive creationists’ claim that the seventh day of creation is still continuing is without any exegetical foundation whatsoever, making it a worthless argument for non-literal creation days."
"So a careful (as opposed to careless!) reading of the Bible indicates that the seventh day in Gen 1:1-2:3 could not have been a 24-hour period of time, and that ought to serve as sufficient warning to the reader that we ought to tread carefully with respect to the remaining days."
Praise the Lord we have people like Dickson and Lankshear who can inform us of such obvious exegetical points overlooked by such nobodies as Josephus, the Church Fathers, the Reformers, Wesley, and modern Hebrew scholars such as Andrew Steinmann, Robert McCabe, James Barr, Steven Boyd, Ting Wang.
If Lankshear could find the slightest evidence for his views before about 1800, he might have a case that they were grounded in the text itself. As it is, they are novelties, and theological novelties are usually known as heresies. In reality, the rationalizations of Blocher, Dickson and Lankshear are totally motivated by the need to subjugate the text to the demands of uniformitarian "science". E.g. Blocher admits:
‘This hypothesis overcomes a number of problems that plagued the commentators [including] the confrontation with the scientific vision of the most distant past.’ [In the Beginning, IVP, p. 50, 1984.]
Clearly Dave if you had read a little Plato, as philosophy majors are apt to do, you would have noticed that Philo, Clement and Origen i.e. the Alexandrian school, had a theological debt to Plato. I have neither the time nor patience to expand on the direct influence that that old pagan paedophile had on these platonists. There are a plethora of Christian philosophers out there over the ages who have pointed this out. Philo et al built a theological story corresponding entirely to PLato's worldview of Ideas. This had direct impact on their interpretation of Genesis 1. That Dickson uses them as his primary support for his heresy only shows that his "research" is amateurish at best, outright dangerous at worst.
Don't forget...sorry, you most likely haven't read The Republic,let alone written any papers on it...that Plato was a believer in the maxim that 'man-boy love is the highest form of love'. He also believed in abortion, selective culling of humans, mass removal of humans from a city to make a new world, etc etc.
Well done Dave, for once again leading people astray by quoting your guru Sri John.
Even Augustine strongly denounced long-age ideas, and affirmed that the earth was about 6000 years old at the time of writing.
As John says, any deviation from a historic Genesis was the same mistake as long-age compromisers make today: imposing outside ideas on the text. In their case, the compromise was neo-Platonism; in the AngloMoorites, it's uniformitarian/evolutionary 'science'.
The Reformation was about the same issue that YECs fight for today: is Scripture the final authority, or are traditions of men (whether popes or uniformitarian scientists) of equal or even higher authority.
Dave I asked 'On what linguistic, or Scriptural basis do you say the days of creation are not earth-rotation days?' You have indeed given me what you consider to be an answer to my question. However I consider the question unanswered.
Consider first ‘linguistic’ evidence :
Some claim that ‘day’ in Genesis is used symbolically but this makes no sense as no word can be used symbolically the first time. In John 10:7 Jesus said ‘I am the gate for the sheep.’ Gate can be used symbolically only because we already know what ‘gate’ means! For the same reason ‘day’ in Genesis cannot be symbolic, or anything other than a literal day.
Those who suggest the idea that each ‘day’ represents a long age must explain what ‘There was evening and there was morning-the first day,’ means. What part of a thousand/million/billion years is evening? It isn’t, it is only a part of a literal day.
I have a working knowledge of a number of languages and in each of these and Hebrew the word day has three meanings:
1) An undefined period of time. A vague period as in–the day of the prophets-meaning time. It is never a fixed period of time.
2) Day, as in daylight. As in I spent all day at the beach.
3) A period of 24 hours. As in I had three days off-the word day accompanied by a number. Always means 24 hour day.
By context we all recognize what a writer means. Every dog has his day, I drove all day, I was away three days. If we reject these universal rules then language has no meaning. Linguistically it is obvious that God is describing 24 hr days. Why would God carefully define His creation days as 6 earth-rotation, evening and morning days, followed by a day of rest, then command the Israelites to work 6 of these same days and rest the 7th if He didn’t mean this to be taken as every-day ordinary days? If His, and their days, are not earth-rotation days then what is God telling them to do? Who would know? But then Dave, in your story this same God threatens the Israelites with death if they worked on the Sabbath. If you are right how could they know when this deadly day was? They couldn’t! What a mixed up, ambiguous irrational god you have.
You and your mates use mans evolutionary long-age views as the ‘glasses’ through which you read Scripture. You have uncritically accepted evolution and long-ages as fact, so you are forced not to accept the obvious linguistic meaning of Genesis, because of your unproven commencing assumptions.
Scripture has to be re-interpreted to fit with your non-Biblical starting point. Conversely we approach Scripture, prayerfully and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit allowing it to speak to us, as written. And speak to it does, telling the same Truths from cover to cover.
Your ‘evidence’ is some distorted version of a few NT texts. I won’t cover this as Ktiso has already sunk those fragile ‘ships.’
What about the Scriptural evidence of your error:
As explained before in both Matthew and Mark we see Jesus soberly talking about divorce and the Genesis basis for marriage, saying man was made at the beginning of the creation. In your tale man came along after billions of years, almost at the very end-the opposite of what Jesus says. This alone destroys your story. Carefully crafted, and honed to a lustre it may be, but nonetheless contradicted both linguistically and Scripturally.
However I am sure you will disregard this as you disregard any Scripture which doesn’t fit with your non-Biblical starting point.
Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who was well aware how people then and later would disbelieve, wrote -‘See to it no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends upon human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.’ Colossians 2:8 . You only follow Christ where His words do not contradict your man-made philosophy.
In 2 Peter 3: 3-7 Peter writes of the ‘scoffers’ who would come in ‘the last days’ denying among other things that the world of that time was destroyed by the flood. You believe that flood was local, not destroying the whole world, but Peter, also inspired by The Holy Spirit disagrees as he likens the flood of Noah to the end of time destruction of the earth by fire. If your reasoning is correct then the destruction by fire will only be a localized event. Madness!
Peter also mentions the idea which evolutionists today call uniformitarianism-that the present is the key to the past, that the forces we see working today are those which have shaped the planet for countless ages. He writes that the scoffers say- ‘Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ Peter says you are wrong, the present is not the key to the past as God has intervened powerfully in the past, as in the flood, when the world was 'deluged and destroyed.' But you claim the flood was local and the world-wide sedimentary rock-layers were laid down over vast periods of time, not in the year of the flood. The Biblical evidence is that you are ‘scoffers’ and wrong.
The scientific evidence supports a massive world-wide flood. For one example the very thick layers of sedimentary rock, exposed at the Grand Canyon in Arizona sit one upon the other with ‘knife-edge’ profile, demonstrating that these layers were laid down, each in one massive waterborne event, one upon the other, with no long interval in between. Had there been long intervals in between then there would certainly be surface erosion of these unconsolidated sediments, but there is none.
Nearby is the Kaibab Upwarp where massive layers of sediment have been bent 90 degrees, by mighty forces. So what someone may ask? The point is that in evolutionary terms, which you accept, these different layers of sediment were laid down over a period of 500 million years and would certainly have formed sedimentary rock in a fraction of this time period. But they bent 90 degrees without cracking. The only reasonable conclusion is that they were laid down and bent before they had hardened as there is no evidence of cracking. How can sedimentary rock bend without cracking? As I say you have uncritically accepted the billions of years view.
In your view death is as old as life upon this planet. However God describes death as an enemy which entered the world because of the sin of Adam. You have destroyed the basis for the Gospel!
As Jesus says ‘You have let go of the commands of God and are holding onto the traditions of men.’
You say we argue over a chapter or two, a baseless claim as we defend the truth of the whole of God’s word right from Genesis, the historical foundation of the historical Gospel, through to Jesus death and resurrection, to Revelation where interestingly in 14:7 it says the eternal Gospel is to worship the creator.
Dave I will pass up on your suggestion of studying at Moore College as I am not interested in being assailed with error and faith-destroying human philosophy.
Dave answered my question concerning Ex 31 with a question: "Before I answer, what do you make of the statement about the Sabbath?
"It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever,""
My response: I wish to quote the entirety of the relevant passage i.e. Exodus 31: 12-18
'And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’”
And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.'
The Hebrew word 'ot not only means 'sign' but also 'evidence'. A sign acts to point someone to something else. As Christians we know that God's Sabbath, rest from our own righteousness, is found in Christ and Christ alone.
However, a sign never does away with the reality that it possesses itself. Thus, reading from this verse, first came the reality of the 7th day of sabbath rest (and the 6 days!) which pointed to the eternal rest found in Christ.
Let me give you an analogy. If I see a sign that says 20 kms to Sydney, the sign serves two functions: that Sydney exists 20 kms from the sign and that the sign is 20kms from Sydney. Both are really physically true. Similarly, the 7th day, as well as Day 1 through to the 6th day of the creation week, is literally true. God himself tells us because he says that the Sabbath is a sign or evidence for something else BECAUSE there was an actual 6 days and 1 of rest in the first week. It's only because there was first a real, that the thing being pointed to has meaning. As C.S.Lewis pointed out, one can't have an image, literal or allegorical, unless the real comes first. To argue that an image without any historical basis preceded the real just doesn't make sense. A type must possess its historical reality first and then it can serve to point to a greater reality. For example, Melchizedek was a real person who was a type of Christ. The Flood was a real historical event and it serves to point us to Baptism, David was a real king who was a type of Christ, etc etc.
So, answer my question now, Dave.
I would have thought by now that Dave would have stormed in to show where my reasoning and use of Scripture (above) was incorrect. But no comment.
I draw from that that he cannot find fault or more likely his Guru hasn't got back to him regarding what to say.
Come on Dave take up the issues!
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