( ͡° ͜ʖ͡°)
Registered Member
There are a couple things that people never seem to address:
1.) Creationism is a novel idea.
Believe it or not, the idea of treating the beginning of Genesis as a geology textbook is largely scoffed at in antiquity. It was the during the Protestant Reformation of 16th century Europe that the idea first gained the sort of traction it has today. (Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, went as far as to call writers like St. Augustine "heretics" for denouncing those who preached it as science.)
2.) There are several creation stories in the Old Testament.
The first one found in the Bible is the seven-day creation story (which, according to Pope Benedict in his book A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall, was written by Jews in the sixth century BC as an ideological counter to the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish). The next story, which details Adam and Eve and which contradicts the seven-day story, comes next. The are more bits and pieces littered through the Book of Job, the Psalms, and the Book of Wisdom.
That's not to say that these stories have no value. On the contrary, a wealth of Jewish theology and ideology can be found within these texts. (The significance of numbers, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significance_of_numbers_of_Judaism )
I'm not trying to argue for or against on side or the other, by the way. I just wanted to point out these peculiarities.
1.) Creationism is a novel idea.
Believe it or not, the idea of treating the beginning of Genesis as a geology textbook is largely scoffed at in antiquity. It was the during the Protestant Reformation of 16th century Europe that the idea first gained the sort of traction it has today. (Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, went as far as to call writers like St. Augustine "heretics" for denouncing those who preached it as science.)
2.) There are several creation stories in the Old Testament.
The first one found in the Bible is the seven-day creation story (which, according to Pope Benedict in his book A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall, was written by Jews in the sixth century BC as an ideological counter to the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish). The next story, which details Adam and Eve and which contradicts the seven-day story, comes next. The are more bits and pieces littered through the Book of Job, the Psalms, and the Book of Wisdom.
That's not to say that these stories have no value. On the contrary, a wealth of Jewish theology and ideology can be found within these texts. (The significance of numbers, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significance_of_numbers_of_Judaism )
I'm not trying to argue for or against on side or the other, by the way. I just wanted to point out these peculiarities.