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Cerealman the conflicted one

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  • #46
    Originally posted by Cerealman View Post
    Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”
    Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”
    Are these simply stating the Earth is planted as is in orbit or that the Earth is flat in relation to these verses?For me personally I've sided with the first.
    STM that the point is not the motionlessness of the Earth, but the Majesty of God its Creator. The example chosen for making the point may be flawed and inaccurate, but the theological lesson suggested by it, stands.

    The observations about the natural world are not for the sake of imparting lessons about the natural world, but for exciting reverence for God in the reader and hearer.

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    • #47
      Originally posted by Cerealman View Post
      True fair enough. The biggest thing to me personally, is the whole Israelite slaves in Egypt.Was the number truly 600k? How come others at the time(egyptians) did not keep track of that many slaves at such a scale?
      I have a theory about this, and it is only my theory (as far as I know) so please don’t give it any more weight than that.

      IMO, the large numbers in Exodus 12.40, Numbers 1 & Numbers 26 are theological constructions. They are not to be taken as historically or logistically accurate population statistics. And they are not intended to be historically counts of the adult population of Israel at those times.
      Instead, I think the numbers have this function: to say that Israel had grown very greatly since Jacob and his descendants came down to Egypt, so that the greatness of this increase - from 70 people to over 600,000 - might be evidence of the greatness and faithfulness of Israel’s God.

      If the figure is at all realistic, maybe it comes from the writer’s own age, and is a retrojection, a number from the writer’s own time cast back upon that ancient population, so as to identify the writer’s Israel with that ancient population.

      Logistically, the entire figure for the Exodus Israelites seems to be closer to 2,000,000, since it does not include women and children. And that figure seems to raise logistical difficulties.

      If anything, this theory - which must surely have been suggested already - oversimplifies the issue, since the text as we have it shows signs of being composite.

      I’m agnostic about the historicity of the Exodus. IMO the accounts of it are Israelite foundation-legends, not unlike the legends and myths of Greece, except that the Biblical texts are “God-breathed”.
      Last edited by Rushing Jaws; 05-07-2019, 11:55 PM.

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