Sunday, May 11, 2008

DINOSAURS & the TORAH (Bilble, Old Testament)

Post 8

DINOSAURS and the TORAH (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament)


In Genesis 1:20 of Period 5 of the creation process, God spells out a mission statement for only two entities when He declared “The waters shall bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly over the earth across the lower heavens of the sky.”

But then in Genesis 1:21 “And God created the great sea giants (monsters) and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, with which the waters swarmed after their kinds, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that it was good.”

It would appear that something went awry in the chronological order of creation and why would God say the giant monsters were a ‘good’ creation when they eventually disappeared from the world? But this is only because we did not understand the order of creation and we were told by the great Sages of the past that the creation of the giant sea monsters was a mistake and because they eventually disappeared, that God never really intended for them to be created. Those Sages even philosophized that God created several worlds before He got it right.

Today we know that the Bible’s referral to giant sea monsters meant dinosaurs which we today classify as ‘ancient reptiles’ and although dinosaurs were not all amphibians we know that origin for all life started in the seas.

The primitive vertebrates were aquatic. There was a slow long transition for those forms of reptiles and ancient vertebrate that eventually appeared on land and some records show this stage as developed from 340-320 million years ago. Dinosaur fossils (known from rocks in Argentina and Brazil) are about 230 million years old. But the ancestors of all dinosaurs were small lizards-like reptiles that are believed to have appeared 330 million years ago.

Dinosaurs ranged in size from the Brachiosaurus that was the length of two large school buses and the height of a four-story building to the Compsognathus which was just slightly larger than a chicken.

Approximately 700 different dinosaur species existed until 65 million years ago when dinosaurs became extinct after having existed for about 165 million years. Dinosaurs were reptiles but some were amphibious.

So then the question is posed, why were those dinosaurs (giant monsters) made if they were not intended to survive? Today science answers that question and there is total agreement that dinosaurs served as the origin of birds.

We know today there were two major groups of dinosaurs, the ornithischians and saurischians. Birds descended from the saurischians and continue to live and dominate the skies as God said they would. The first birds of the types we see today developed about 100 million years ago as many original species of birds that developed from the small meat-eating dinosaurs became extinct. Many scientists, including Thomas Henry Huxley, believed the birds resembled the theropod dinosaurs (especially the coelurosaurs).

The earliest ‘creeping creatures with which the waters swarmed’ are classified as reptiles. Those that did survive the Cretaceous Period of 140 million years ago were killed off by whales when they took to the sea.

In summary, the answer for the reason for the creation of dinosaurs is because they were a needed building block for the development of birds. Many of the creeping aquatic creatures developed from the varied species of reptiles.

We could now appreciate that there was a perfect chronology of Genesis 1:21 events for giant sea monsters and the creeping creatures that swarmed in the waters with Genesis 1:20 where God asked for the swarming sea creatures and then the birds. In Genesis 1:21 the giant sea creatures were mentioned before the birds, but the birds did not evolve from them until after the swarming creatures were created. So Creation followed the time course of Genesis 1:20 for first the swarming creatures and then the birds.

So oh my, the Bible could only have been issued by a Supreme Power and no man could have had any input into it!!

Details for that period of history are found in chapter one of the book.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Christian Bible Printers & the Torah (Hebrew Bible)

Blog 7 Christian Bible Printers and the Torah (Bible of the Israelites)

The Hebrew Bible consists of the Five Books of Moses (Christians call it The Old Testament) and the oral law called the Talmud and other works of law and history which together are referred to as the Torah, although the word ‘Torah’ is commonly used when referring to the written Bible itself.

The Torah as delivered by Moses was not originally divided into chapters but was one continuous set of scrolls. The categorization into chapters was begun in the Middle Ages by Christian Bible printers.

The original name given for the Five Books of Moses by the Hebrew Sages was ‘Book of Creation.’ Transliterated from the Hebrew it was pronounced Sefer Masseh Bereshith. In the sixteenth century when there was an attempt to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the Greek influence caused many to refer to the first book as Genesis, which means ‘origin’ in Greek. The present Hebrew name, transliterated sounds Bereshith, means ‘during the beginning.’ This name was adopted by the Jews (Hebrews) because BERESHITH is the first Hebrew word with which the Bible begins. Today most English translations for Jewish Bibles include both titles.

Our book, WHY HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT NEED BLIND FAITH TO BELIEVE IN CREATIONISM, is the first which offers collaborative scientific proof that the Bible is totally accurate. This means that only a Supreme Power could have issued the Bible to Moses.

The field of science, once thought to be in conflict with the Bible, is now our closest ally.

As the previous blog indicates, matching events of the Bible with scientific knowledge of when the different creative processes took place, has enabled us to even assign an appropriate time period for when each reported event of Genesis occurred.

The Torah (Hebrew Bible) was written in the common language of man so it would be understood not only by the Children of the Exodus but by all Jews who follow them.

Won’t you forward this message onto your friends and ask them to forward it onto theirs?

Thursday, May 1, 2008

GOD: the different names by which He is reffered to

BLOG 6

GOD: the different names in the Hebrew Bible by which He is referred

God is referred to by different names in the Torah (Hebrew Bible). One name that God is referred to, as transliterated in the Hebrew, is Elohim. That name refers to God as the God of justice, ruler, the Creator.

At other times, God is referred to, as transliterated in the Hebrew, as Adonay. That name is used to refer to God when stressing His loving kindness, acts of mercy, and close relationship to man.

In the story of Genesis prior to Genesis 2:4, God is only referred to as Elohim.

During the story of the parable of the Garden of Eden from Genesis 2:4 through Genesis 3:24, God is always referred to by both names, Adonay Elohim together. With the exception of being referred to by both names at the same time again in Exodus 9:30, nowhere are both names used again together in the Torah when referring to God.

After Genesis 3:24, God is only referred to as either Adonay or Elohim depending on the topic.

Referring to God as Elohim only during the story of creation in Genesis 1 and referring to Him by both titles through the story of the parable of the Garden of Eden is one of the proofs that the physical story of creation is separate from the parable of the Garden of Eden episode. For more details proving that the Garden of Eden story is a parable and not a continuation of or a second story about creation, one should read the book. Note that the explanation for the mind boggler presented in blog #5 is also found in the book.

Unfortunately, all English translations of the Bible refer to God as God or Lord. Both names are seen as synonyms and the nuances of the significance of the Hebrew names indicating particular title characteristics are lost by nature of such translation.