Hawking Wrong About Pope

[Jesuspaidtheprice]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1008363' date='Jun 19 2006, 04:19 PM']
They are historical, but not necessarily complete lists.
[/quote]

If the people are historical, its hard to make the dichotomy that many Catholic scholars do between the historicity of the people and the events. Moses may have not 'been there, done that' but there is perhaps something to be said about the oral tradition of the Jewish people, the inspiration of God, and the ability of God to preserve an accurate account of the early human race through human writers. Calling into question the length of a day I would presume to be well within good study, to question whether these are simply 'mythical stories that teach truths' is another matter.

[jswranch]

[quote name='Jesuspaidtheprice' post='1008457' date='Jun 19 2006, 04:37 PM']
If the people are historical, its hard to make the dichotomy that many Catholic scholars do between the historicity of the people and the events. Moses may have not 'been there, done that' but there is perhaps something to be said about the oral tradition of the Jewish people, the inspiration of God, and the ability of God to preserve an accurate account of the early human race through human writers. Calling into question the length of a day I would presume to be well within good study, to question whether these are simply 'mythical stories that teach truths' is another matter.
[/quote]
Careful here. You are placing biblical interpretations of Adam, Moses, Abraham all in the same basket when you say [quote]If the people are historical, its hard to make the dichotomy that many Catholic scholars do between the historicity of the people and the events.[/quote]

We simply cannot paint these differing accounts with the same paint brush. We can look at Adam as a "Mythical stories that teach truth." Abraham not so much. Moses, no. As for "mythical stores that teach truth," Jesus told one every time told a parable. Are we to believe there actually was a son who went asked for his father's inheritence exactly, word for word like Jesus said? Are we to believe a first century shephard who was worth his daily pay would leave his 99 sheep alone to find the missing one? No.

Edited June 20, 2006 by jswranch

[Jesuspaidtheprice]

[quote name='jswranch' post='1008477' date='Jun 19 2006, 06:58 PM']
Careful here. You are placing biblical interpretations of Adam, Moses, Abraham all in the same basket when you say

You simply cannot paint these differing accounts with the same paint brush, which I believe you may have. We can look at Adam as a "Mythical stories that teach truth." Abraham not so much. Moses, no. As for "mythical stores that teach truth," Jesus told one every time told a parable. Are we to believe there actually was a son who went asked for his father's inheritence exactly, word for word like Jesus said? Are we to believe a first century shephard left his 99 sheep alone to find the one? No.
[/quote]

Hardly, but that is why these message board things don't do a whole lot of good when one must spend time stating what he or she already stated. I previously stated that Catholics usually affirm that Abraham was a historical man. I'm pointing to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, which I'm assuming is agreed upon with a fair amount of certainty. That aside your question here is of the nature of the literature early on in Genesis. I'm not quite sure what about the text allows you to believe that it is a parable or to be taken only in an allegorical sense. This is my reason for pointing out the strong lineages in the early part of Genesis. If the text were to intend to only teach an allegory there would be little, if any need, for such lineage. Jesus did not give us the historical background to the family when he talked about the prodigal son. Moses has given us this data from his account of the origin of the world and seamlessly woven it in with the rest of Genesis. If the people are real enough (someone said Catholics have to believe that there is a first man and a first woman) it seems sensible enough that the stories are not fictitious. No one is claiming though that Genesis chapter one is a scientific manual. It can, none-the-less, describe what happened, even if Moses doesn't know the exact science behind it.

I apologize for 'hi-jacking' this thread.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Jesuspaidtheprice' post='1008503' date='Jun 19 2006, 07:10 PM']
Hardly, but that is why these message board things don't do a whole lot of good when one must spend time stating what he or she already stated. I previously stated that Catholics usually affirm that Abraham was a historical man. I'm pointing to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, which I'm assuming is agreed upon with a fair amount of certainty. That aside your question here is of the nature of the literature early on in Genesis. I'm not quite sure what about the text allows you to believe that it is a parable or to be taken only in an allegorical sense. This is my reason for pointing out the strong lineages in the early part of Genesis. If the text were to intend to only teach an allegory there would be little, if any need, for such lineage. Jesus did not give us the historical background to the family when he talked about the prodigal son. Moses has given us this data from his account of the origin of the world and seamlessly woven it in with the rest of Genesis. If the people are real enough (someone said Catholics have to believe that there is a first man and a first woman) it seems sensible enough that the stories are not fictitious. No one is claiming though that Genesis chapter one is a scientific manual. It can, none-the-less, describe what happened, even if Moses doesn't know the exact science behind it.

I apologize for 'hi-jacking' this thread.
[/quote]

Well, for starters, the large amount of obvious symbolism in the first three chapters of Genesis are a good clue. I'm not saying that there weren't an Adam and Eve...of course there were...and they were tempted by Satan and fell. However, if you look at, for instance, the structure of the creation accounts, it paints a very beautiful picture about how God works and seems to make a strong point of doing it, even to such an extent that one could say this seems to be Moses' main task in those chapters.

[Socrates]

A bit of proofreading - last sentence should read, "Bishop Theodoric’s invention of general anesthesia during the ‘dark ages,’ and Bishop Steno as a father of geology and [b]the discoverer[/b] of fossilization."

[Era Might]

Catholics must affirm that there was a literal first man and first woman:

[quote]When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

--Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Letter "Humani Generis"[/quote]

Pope Leo XIII explains the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture:

[quote]The principles here laid down will apply cognate sciences, and especially to History. It is a lamentable fact that there are many who with great labour carry out and publish investigations on the monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of nations and other illustrative subjects, and whose chief purpose in all this is too often to find mistakes in the sacred writings and so to shake and weaken their authority. Some of these writers display not only extreme hostility, but the greatest unfairness; in their eyes a profane book or ancient document is accepted without hesitation, whilst the Scripture, if they only find in it a suspicion of error, is set down with the slightest possible discussion as quite untrustworthy. It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred.

--Encyclical Letter "Providentissimus Deus"[/quote]

The Bible does teach history, and history also falls under the protection of inerrancy. However, that doesn't mean everything is precisely correct, because ancient writers often did not intend to give an exactly precise account; it was common to paraphrase or sum up a point.

The key is to read the sacred text as the author intended it. If he was intending it as history (such as the geneology accounts), we should read it as such, though not ignoring the ancient form of writing history. If it is not meant as history, then we should read it as such. The Church is our guide here, when we are unsure.

[CatholicCid]

[quote name='jswranch' post='1008329' date='Jun 19 2006, 01:19 PM']
John Paul did said ‘Science...
[/quote]

I think it should be "John Paul did [b]say[/b] `Science..."

[Laudate_Dominum]

IMHO, we would not have modern science without Catholicism. And insofar as science is true, it's ours. We've got the monopoly on truth.