A K A Stone, I told you I would stop posting until I could fully answer you, and I meant it. I'm not going to recriminate. You said plenty that made my blood boil, but I've decided to take it as sincere concern for what I've said, as opposed to simply trying to bait me.
You've said many times that I don't provide Scripture. I have, but to the extent that I have not provided enough. this e-mail will remedy that.
I've agreed to use the KJV, and just that. No Hebrew, no Greek, no outside interpretive Scripture translations. The KJV has no footnotes, sp there will be no wrangling between us over the authority of footnotes that are not there. It's just the text, and you've said you accept this text as authoritative.
I know that the original KJV contained the Apocrypha also, but I'm not going to use the Apocrypha (even though it's part of the full KJV), because that will simply be another opportunity for a pointless fight. God's law is all in the Protestant canon, so I'll leave that issue be also.
So here we are with the KJV text. I'm going to go through it starting with Genesis 1, and note each place where there is something of particular interest that bears, directly or indirectly, on our discussion of economics and law.
I have to do this because of your very aggressive and hostile tone. You've said that I don't quote Scripture, but I did, at length, so I can see that every single point I make has to be specifically backed by a citation right in the text. Now, I've noticed that you don't write that way at all, and neither does anybody else. But because the things that I say do not fit your tradition, you hold me to a much higher standard than you hold yourself or your allies. You can simply positively assert your tradition as though it is a fact - without citing a word of Scripture - as though the fact that it's your tradition ESTABLISHES it as scripture. But if I do not point cite each and every point, I'm a false prophet, twister of scripture, doing Satan's work, and every other damned thing.
Fine then, I shall meet you all the way, and provide a point cite to every single point I make.
But you won't let it go at that either. Once you have Scripture that demonstrates the point, you'll reject my argument anyway, claiming that I am "twisting Scripture" or "taking it out of context".
The only way I can avoid THAT charge is to present ALL of Scripture - every single thing that is important to the topic, in order from the beginning to the end of Scripture, so that nothing is left out. This is the only way to defeat the charge of "taking it out of context" - to provide the FULL context.
I did something close to that before, and you never even acknowledged it. I think that what I am doing is a fool's errand. YOU are not going to accept what the Scripture says, because the full weight of Scripture, fully deployed, is contrary to your tradition.
So what you will do is what you have already done: you will ignore what I've written, and then say that I'm not reading something right, and that I've presented things out of context.
I know that I cannot win from the beginning of this exercise. I know that you will not be persuaded by Scripture itself. I'm going to go through the full dress battle anyway, line by line, because it deserves to be said, and if you will not be persuaded, others will.
From my perspective, once God's laws and examples have been laid end-to-end, the principles are very clear and there isn't much left to debate, because God is clear.
So, that's what I am going to do, the source I'm going to use, how I'm going to use it, why I am doing it just this way - all the while acknowledging that in the end I do not believe I can win in your court, because I think you have prejudged the case. But maybe seeing God's word laid out for you end to end will break open the prison door of your heart.
"And so we sail, in the confident expectation of a miracle." - the Duke of Medina Sidonia
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning..."
Note that the word is "in", and not "AT". "At the beginning..." would mean a single point of time. "At 10 o'clock", or "At the opening bell", but "In the beginning..." refers to an indeterminate span of time.
If you said "At the start of the first inning" of a baseball game, we would think of the first pitch, but if you said "In the first inning", we would recognize that the subject event occurred during a span of at bats by both sides.
This is important, because some traditions assert that the Bible says that God created everything from nothing in an instant, that it's right there in the first sentence. Actually, that is NOT there in the first sentence. The text does not speak of a point of time - AT the beginning - AT the start - but of a span of time - IN the beginning - IN the first inning. Also, the text does not say that God created the whole universe from nothing. That's a traditional addition to the text. The text itself says that God created "the Heaven" and "the Earth".
We discover in Genesis 1:8 that "the Heaven" is specifically the firmament that God made "in the midst of the waters", in other words the sky. And in 1:10, that :the Earth" specifically means "the dry land", and NOT "the planet".
Does it matter? Yes it does. It matters because in the Creationist/Evolutionist debates, many creationists go too far and assert that the Scriptures say things that they do not say. What they say, using the definitions in the text, is that during the beginning God made the sky and the dry land. Then Genesis goes on after that to describe the filling up of the dry land with things, and the waters with sea creatures.
And so we come to the first commandment, given to the lifeless darkness: "Let there be light!" Genesis 1:3. In 1:5 Genesis will define "Light" as "Day", and darkness as "Night".
And that is where we will stop for tonight. Genesis 1:1 does not support the excessively detailed claims that some make. It is a more general summary.
