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Greetings and salutations
First off, I must openly admit to finding myself a bit confused.
Having grown up in the Buchanan Street United Methodist Church in Amarillo, Texas, dragged through various Assembly of God churches (courtesy of my USAF father), and eventually to the Friends Quaker Church in Las Animas, Colorado, it has been perplexing how many ways the exact same verses from the Bible can be interpreted - with each interpretation professed as being authoritative.
Being a writer myself, as well as a student of older literature (often in other languages), I find myself questioning just how authoritative any incarnation of the Bible is capable of being. In no way do I question the origins of the Bible (more on that below), but I do question the fluidity and plasticity of language itself.
Even something as simple as saying "time flies like an arrow"... Most who natively speak English understand this to mean time passes swiftly, as it was intended. Those unfamiliar with English could well interpret "time" as the verb and "flies" as the noun (the plural of fly) and wonder why insects are being compared to archaic missiles.
In addition is the plasticity of a language itself. When someone refers to "The Gay 90s", they're not referring to rampant homosexuality but to the lackadaisical and carefree existence of the 1890s. Even today, it is not uncommon to hear someone use the phrase "back in my day" and clearly understand that the person is not referring to a specific passage of 24 hours but, rather, to a general period of time of indeterminate length with a significant beginning and ending.
The above is further complicated by the fact that most languages have unique - and often untranslatable - traits, such as all nouns in German having a gender or the Inuit language having over 400 words for "snow". Translating between modern languages is frequently problematic and often replete with incomplete (or outright wrong) translations - this is even moreso when translating from ancient languages.
Also, lest we forget, the nefarious "Unholy Bible" - in which the word "not" was accidentally omitted from Exodus 20:14, the Seventh Commandment. How many mistakes such as this have slipped through the cracks over thousands of years? How many have never been noticed and/or corrected?!? What about the Apocrypha? Who among humankind truly has the authority to deem what parts of the Bible are "worthy of consumption"?
As I mentioned above, I have no doubts as to the authenticity of the Bible's origins. Dealing regularly with language, I readily understand how many ways words can be understood (or misunderstood) - particularly when it comes to the 'days' of creation.
Back when the Book of Genesis was first being written down, people of that era couldn't understand the astronomical concepts we understand today. Heck, people in the Middle Ages didn't even understand the concept of the viruses responsible for the Black Death. The formation of the cosmos had to be expressed in terminology they could understand.
Ironically, it has been the seemingly-endless debate between Creationists and Evolutionists which first convinced me of the authenticity of the Bible's origins. Everything that science has been able to determine about how our world came to be as it is matches so closely with the Biblical account that it has only served to prove what it sought to disprove.
I don't mean any of this to come across as confrontational. There may well be (and probably are) exceedingly rational explanations which can remedy my confusion - just that I've never encountered them. I certainly hope so. I can understand that God operates on a plane beyond our comprehensions, but I really don't think He ever intended deliberate confusion.
Having grown up in the Buchanan Street United Methodist Church in Amarillo, Texas, dragged through various Assembly of God churches (courtesy of my USAF father), and eventually to the Friends Quaker Church in Las Animas, Colorado, it has been perplexing how many ways the exact same verses from the Bible can be interpreted - with each interpretation professed as being authoritative.
Being a writer myself, as well as a student of older literature (often in other languages), I find myself questioning just how authoritative any incarnation of the Bible is capable of being. In no way do I question the origins of the Bible (more on that below), but I do question the fluidity and plasticity of language itself.
Even something as simple as saying "time flies like an arrow"... Most who natively speak English understand this to mean time passes swiftly, as it was intended. Those unfamiliar with English could well interpret "time" as the verb and "flies" as the noun (the plural of fly) and wonder why insects are being compared to archaic missiles.
In addition is the plasticity of a language itself. When someone refers to "The Gay 90s", they're not referring to rampant homosexuality but to the lackadaisical and carefree existence of the 1890s. Even today, it is not uncommon to hear someone use the phrase "back in my day" and clearly understand that the person is not referring to a specific passage of 24 hours but, rather, to a general period of time of indeterminate length with a significant beginning and ending.
The above is further complicated by the fact that most languages have unique - and often untranslatable - traits, such as all nouns in German having a gender or the Inuit language having over 400 words for "snow". Translating between modern languages is frequently problematic and often replete with incomplete (or outright wrong) translations - this is even moreso when translating from ancient languages.
Also, lest we forget, the nefarious "Unholy Bible" - in which the word "not" was accidentally omitted from Exodus 20:14, the Seventh Commandment. How many mistakes such as this have slipped through the cracks over thousands of years? How many have never been noticed and/or corrected?!? What about the Apocrypha? Who among humankind truly has the authority to deem what parts of the Bible are "worthy of consumption"?
As I mentioned above, I have no doubts as to the authenticity of the Bible's origins. Dealing regularly with language, I readily understand how many ways words can be understood (or misunderstood) - particularly when it comes to the 'days' of creation.
Back when the Book of Genesis was first being written down, people of that era couldn't understand the astronomical concepts we understand today. Heck, people in the Middle Ages didn't even understand the concept of the viruses responsible for the Black Death. The formation of the cosmos had to be expressed in terminology they could understand.
Ironically, it has been the seemingly-endless debate between Creationists and Evolutionists which first convinced me of the authenticity of the Bible's origins. Everything that science has been able to determine about how our world came to be as it is matches so closely with the Biblical account that it has only served to prove what it sought to disprove.
I don't mean any of this to come across as confrontational. There may well be (and probably are) exceedingly rational explanations which can remedy my confusion - just that I've never encountered them. I certainly hope so. I can understand that God operates on a plane beyond our comprehensions, but I really don't think He ever intended deliberate confusion.
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