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and you know what the response was? "We trust God more than scientists. Whatever he says is true!"
I really don't see a huge problem with this considering what the creation account actually is.
The names "Adam" and "Eve" are just the Hebrew words for "Mankind" and "Life," and it was likely they weren't usually used as names. Also, it doesn't come across in the English, but the first part of Genesis is actually a Hebrew poem with a recurring numeric structure. It was written separately from the rest of Genesis and is probably quite a bit older. Given the way it was written it is likely that the creation account featuring Adam and Eve was never meant to be taken literally anyway, so arguing for two literal people doesn't even make sense in terms of the Bible.
So if you consider the story to be a poetic reflection on mankind's most ancient memories before the transition to ancient culture, then it doesn't conflict in any way with evolution. People who spend time arguing about evolution are missing the point of the first few chapters of Genesis. Now, if they want to argue for a young earth and a literal Adam and Eve, fine, but if you really study the passage those issues are totally not the point.
(September 8, 2011 at 12:25 pm)Rhythm Wrote:
A lack of investigation? In the New Testament you have three words that are translated into "hell":
Gehenna, a hellenized version of the Hebrew Hinnom which is actually a name and a place in the Levant (King Ahaz burnt his children in a fire here, and made "profane offerings". The implications of this words use is that a person is being offered up to another god, or in fact to no gods.
Hades, this obviously being the greek god of the underworld (and the name of his domian). As far as the NT goes it is most likely that this word is used simply to mean a grave.
Tartaros, This one means torture. This was a portion of the greek underworld where those who offended the gods would be found. This one absolutely means torture, same as it did for the greeks.
In the Old Testament you only have one, Sheol. Sheol appears to have been the Hebrew's version of the Sumerian and Babylonian Irkalla. A place for the dead, all of them. Good, bad, and indifferent. Think dust and ash everywhere, a generally unpleasant place. This was the prevalent view of the afterlife in the entire Near Eastern world. The number of times that the the word Hades is used for Sheol in the OT indicates to us that at the time of translation, the two words were taken to mean the same thing, or very nearly the same thing. Simply the presumption that life somehow continued after death. Early Christians would have most likely regarded hell along the lines of greco-roman thought; a dreary place, shadowy and generally unpleasant. Stories of torture are found in specific cases, for specific acts (those who did not show compassion and selflessness, and specifically the enemies of the lord). Early christians didn't actually write much about hell and may not have taken what was written as literally as many do today. The concept of the afterlife was simply not very well developed in the Jewish tradition, or the tradition of the Early christians. The only place that we find Hades used in an explicitly "torturous" manner is in Revelations. The problem is that this particular narrative is unlike the other narratives of the NT. We would expect to find a different usage of the word Hades here than we would elsewhere. There are some other interesting concepts of hell, such as the tiered system described in Luke 16:23 ,(which appears to be the first mention of a sort of paradisical afterlife for the virtuous) or the various mentions in the Apocrypha. The concept of hell we currently see so well represented is likely a product of the expansion of the church into Western Europe. Much has been written on the "Gospel of Nicodemus/Acts of Pilate" which are considered apocrypha but nonetheless had a profound effect on what would become the modern concept of hell. The hell which believers imagine today most likely began to be formed no earlier than the 5th century in medieval Europe.
So, the idea of a god sending people to eternal flame and punishment is not strictly speaking biblical (except in very special circumstances). From the standpoint of material reality, it doesn't really matter whether you subscribe to Sheol, or the W European concept of Hell, neither are meaningful, as there is nothing to suggest to us that life continues after death.
Oh yeah, the church has a WAY more developed view of hell than the Bible does. The word hell itself is a little misleading, as the word it's usually translated from just refers to an actual place (the town dump, which was usually on fire). Christians pretty much just copied down what Dante said about hell and thought they might as well canonize it. So now-a-days we have this huge, fleshed out idea of what hell is and exactly who is and isn't going there. But in the Bible people are more or less mystified about the underworld. They just know that God has something good planned.
