Like the Hebrew Bible, many cultures' creation myths include genealogies of deities, aka pantheons, which usually somehow include human rulers who claim divine rights to dominate and profit from other human beings. Ironically, readers mistakenly believe that many Hebrew Bible stories are history instead of myth or legend because they are unaware of actual human history. By learning about the long and repetitive history of human cultures on earth, readers are more able to place their favorite religious stories and artifacts within the time and place they arose and begin to deconstruct the indoctrination that blinds them to historical fact with religious fiction. Thank you for your service! Be well!
@@nanapotter3461 I wasn't replying to the general point you were trying to make. I was replying to this comparison between the Hebrew Bible and other culture's creation myths. This is the foundational premise of the rest of what you said. This premise is faulty so the conclusions you make later are probably faulty as well. Everything else you wrote relies on the Hebrew Bible's stories being the same as all these other stories and just a historical repetition of myth. If the Hebrew story isn't the same as these other stories, which it isn't since the Hebrew Bible doesn't contain genealogies of dieties, aka pantheons, and since it doesn't include human rulers who claim divine rights, then there isn't the connection you want to make. Your premise is faulty and since it undergirds your conclusion, so is the conclusion.
@@mizotter I did watch the video and what exactly am I wrong about? Where is the genealogy of a pantheon in the Bible. Where does the Bible give human rulers divine rights to dominate? Then tell me where my reasoning was wrong. Coming in here and just saying "Wrong" is just a claim. I have no reason to believe it without evidence.
@ericreed4535 Obviously, I was joking. But your joke went over my head. Can you lower your expectations of my intelligence and explain to me what you mean?
It boggles my mind how many Christians go, "What about the genealogies?" but are all too willing to ignore things Jesus said as though those things were mythological, such as when he basically says it would be impossible for a rich man to get into heaven, or when he says not to store up treasure on earth because your heart will be with your treasure. If you get to ignore God, what good are a couple of genealogies? The whole bible should be worthless at that point.
Caine and Abel story is teaching a moral lesson that farmers who settle in one place descend into wickedness and murder. Humble nomadic shepherds are good, farmers bad.
@abhbible there's a good possibility they're the sons of one of the Adam's of the Adamic cycle. I think the Adam 50,000 years ago is a better candidate than the one 150,000 years ago.
That was very interesting nugget about king David and it's led me down a rabbit hole... There were two towns of Bethlehem?! Bethlehem of Zebulun and Bethlehem of Ephratah/Judah?
That is something to consider. But a few missing names doesn't effect the message or the wisdom of the Bible and it proves that the Bible isn't being doctored. And more importantly, there are predictions of Jesus in Genesis with Abraham and how could anyone explain Isaiah 53?
@@Move_I_Got_This-b3v The are no predictions of Jesus in Genesis. Isaiah 53 is about the servant of Yahweh, who’s explicitly identified as a righteous remnant of Israel.
@@abhbible Once you see the depth of the Bible it will give you pause. The Bible is like one massive parable to solve, but it doesn't tell you that, you have to figure out that part out first. Abraham has a miracle son and God asks him to sacrifice his only begotten son. The son asks where the sacrifice ram was Abraham responded "God will provide" and that's exactly what ends up happening. God Himself comes down and takes on the form of a servant, doesn't tell hardly anyone, and saves the entire world. The Israelites tried to change the translation of Isaiah 53 but look how that turned out. Who's more cursed than Israel. Only 1 country has their back, all other countries voted against them being in Gaza. So much to say....
@@abhbible You're in over your head. If you don't have anyone to plagiarize, then you don't know what to say. I used to be an aTheist. Now a Jedi that takes down atheists and theists who don't know God's ways. 🥰
I love how well spoken you are. You communicate clearly and with precision. It sounds like you read one commentary on the Chronicle genealogies and think that is all that needs to be said on it. I think there is some problems in your analysis. Some of the reasoning is strange. For instance, you say that because Naphtali's genealogy is very short, it isn't relying on history. Why would that be? If anything, I would think its the other way around. If the genealogies are just being pulled out of someone's rear end then I would expect all the genealogies to be complete. The extremely short genealogy of Naphtali then would be the result of lost information and an example of an author not wanting to invent things to make it more robust. Genealogies in the ancient world aren't like ours. You are calling things contradictions when they are not because you are interpreting them through a modern lens, instead of how the ancients used them. Though I agree that a name in a genealogy doesn't make it true, it doesn't make it untrue that Aram is the father of the Arameans just because the name is the same. You see, genealogies are often "clan geneologies." When you see this in the Bible you are automatically assuming that the genealogies are contradictions when they aren't. The ancient language didn't have a name for father, grandfather, great grandfather, great great grandfather. All were just "Father." So you can skip people in a genealogy. So an ancient genealogy could say, "David the father of Jesus," and another one could say, "Joseph the father of Jesus," and both would be right. That isn't a contradiction. So Matthew has a genealogy that is split into 3 equal parts of 14 names. Matthew isn't just making a mistake or lying. He is making a statement to his audience. Numbers in the ancient world aren't used like we use them today. They have idiomatic numbers, gematria, idealized numbers, etc. So Matthew is using this style to present a genealogy but it skips generations which is perfectly acceptable by both linguistic and cultural rules. Finally, the ancient world allowed for the grafting in of someone into a genealogy. We would abhor that today since we are so literal, but in the ancient world this was perfectly acceptable, because genealogies weren't just about a bloodline. They had other functions such as temple rights and land allotment. So for instance, Samuel was given over to temple service by a barren mother who plead to God for a child. She made a vow to give him to the Lord. Temple service requires one to be a part of a certain tribe, the Levites, so Samuel's lineage is grafted into the Levitical line so that he can serve in the temple. So what you are calling contradictions aren't. What is happening is that you are reading your modern view of genealogies back onto an ancient text with different cultural rules, practices, and purposes. Instead, these are historical genealogies but hard to interpret because of these other factors.
@@blusheep2 I’ve read five commentaries and twice as many monographs and three times as many articles. I’m publishing on Chronicles in the Spring. My reasoning isn’t strange. You don’t seem to understand what I explicitly said. The poverty of Naphthali’s genealogy is evidence the author didn’t have an extensive, extra-biblical genealogical list which would be necessary for historical precision.
@@blusheep2 Matthew and Luke’s genealogies contradict even if you allow for skips in generations. There are tons of contradictions in the Bible. Ancient people recognized this. Only fundamentalists pretend that contradictions result from a modern lens.
@@abhbible I'm not trying to suggest your not well read. If your publishing then how is it that you recognize the differences between ancient genealogies and our modern ones and if you are aware, then why don't you mention these differences in your video. Why would you instead, call things contradictions from a modern lens when they aren't from an ancient lens? Why would you frame these difference as reasons to know they are false? _The poverty of Naphthali’s genealogy is evidence the author didn’t have an extensive, extra-biblical genealogical list which would be necessary for historical precision._ Yes, I understand this but this a bad reason then to say that the genealogy is just tradition and not historical. It just would mean that its incomplete. Historical but incomplete. To say otherwise is bad reasoning. I don't deny there are contradictions. I am not a Biblical inerrancy supporter. I think its dumb because even the doctrine is that the Bible is inerrant in its original autographs but we don't have original autographs. We only have copies and translations so the doctrine doesn't apply to any of the Bibles in our homes and museums. We also know of faulty translations in the past meaning there was quite a few people for a time, reading and studying a faulty Bible. Translations are also, never perfect. You always lose something in translation so even the most faithful translation isn't going to be perfectly accurate to the original. I do believe its infallible in that it speaks true things about God and I believe that the Bible is trustworthy. If there are 4000 Solomon horses in one book but 40,000 in another, I have no problem with calling that a scribal error and moving on. It does nothing for or against the story and if we are having to rely on this detail to prove or disprove the Bible then I'm not to concerned about the rest. And to be precise, I didn't say that contradictions only come from a modern lens. I said your presentation on the historicity of the genealogies is faulty because it was done from a modern lens. Therefore you called things contradictions that the ancient audiences would never have done. I'm speaking to your presentation of genealogies not every claim to contradiction made against the Bible. For instance, the number of woman at the tomb "contradiction," doesn't have a cultural explanation and so has nothing to do with a modern lens or an ancient one.
@The incompleteness of Naphthali’s genealogy and the missing genealogies is the point. It’s evidence that they don’t have more information at their disposal. Again, you simply misunderstand. Whether ancient people thought they contradicted or not is irrelevant to whether or not they in fact contradict. Different people at different times are willing to invent and accept different explanations for irregularities in the text. I don’t see any reason to accept bad, unevidenced explanations just because people did a long time ago.
@@abhbible _It’s evidence that they don’t have more information at their disposal. Again, you simply misunderstand._ But your video is trying to argue that the genealogies are ahistorical. That they are just tradition. You can't reach that conclusion through this example. Lacking a full genealogical list for Naphtali neither invalidates the information about Naphtali, nor any of the other genealogies they did have more complete records or memory of. Do you see what I'm saying? Its not a matter of me understanding your point. I do. Its a matter of that point leading to the conclusion you made that is the problem. The conclusion you made in your video wasn't "they don't have more information at their disposal." In my opinion, you need to drop that as a premise for your argument. _Whether ancient people thought they contradicted or not is irrelevant to whether or not they in fact contradict._ NOOoooo..... This is reading modern sensitivities into an ancient text. You are imposing your enlightenment culture on a culture that had different norms and practices. This is called context. If you refuse to consider cultural context then you aren't being faithful to the text and your not being intellectually honest. For us to say "abhbible's father is John," and to say "abhbible's father is Mark," is a contradiction. (barring there was no adoption, remarriage of the mom and we aren't talking about priests), but that is not so for the ancients because a dad was "father," a grand dad was "father", a clan patriarch was "father." So what ancient people thought, in this case(not always the case), matters in the extreme. This is no "invention" to explain irregularities. This is archeology. This is textual criticism. This is the evidence of the historical record. Genealogies then don't have the same function of genealogies today. You say your publishing a paper?
I think it's a little funny that 2 Timothy 4:4 says: "...and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths." What's ironic is much of what we know of the life of Jesus from antiquity is myth. The author of 2 Timothy probably didn't believe the 20 or so _gospels_ of his day were myth.
Like the Hebrew Bible, many cultures' creation myths include genealogies of deities, aka pantheons, which usually somehow include human rulers who claim divine rights to dominate and profit from other human beings.
Ironically, readers mistakenly believe that many Hebrew Bible stories are history instead of myth or legend because they are unaware of actual human history. By learning about the long and repetitive history of human cultures on earth, readers are more able to place their favorite religious stories and artifacts within the time and place they arose and begin to deconstruct the indoctrination that blinds them to historical fact with religious fiction.
Thank you for your service! Be well!
The Hebrew Bible doesn't contain genealogies of deities and pantheons. Nor does it include human rulers with divine rights to dominate.
@@blusheep2you missed the point on purpose
@@nanapotter3461 I wasn't replying to the general point you were trying to make. I was replying to this comparison between the Hebrew Bible and other culture's creation myths. This is the foundational premise of the rest of what you said. This premise is faulty so the conclusions you make later are probably faulty as well. Everything else you wrote relies on the Hebrew Bible's stories being the same as all these other stories and just a historical repetition of myth. If the Hebrew story isn't the same as these other stories, which it isn't since the Hebrew Bible doesn't contain genealogies of dieties, aka pantheons, and since it doesn't include human rulers who claim divine rights, then there isn't the connection you want to make. Your premise is faulty and since it undergirds your conclusion, so is the conclusion.
@@blusheep2 LOL! WRONG! Read again! And watch the video!
@@mizotter I did watch the video and what exactly am I wrong about? Where is the genealogy of a pantheon in the Bible. Where does the Bible give human rulers divine rights to dominate? Then tell me where my reasoning was wrong.
Coming in here and just saying "Wrong" is just a claim. I have no reason to believe it without evidence.
Aragorn was also real. We have his genealogy. Thanks.
@ericreed4535 Obviously, I was joking. But your joke went over my head. Can you lower your expectations of my intelligence and explain to me what you mean?
It boggles my mind how many Christians go, "What about the genealogies?" but are all too willing to ignore things Jesus said as though those things were mythological, such as when he basically says it would be impossible for a rich man to get into heaven, or when he says not to store up treasure on earth because your heart will be with your treasure.
If you get to ignore God, what good are a couple of genealogies? The whole bible should be worthless at that point.
Caine and Abel story is teaching a moral lesson that farmers who settle in one place descend into wickedness and murder. Humble nomadic shepherds are good, farmers bad.
@@paulschuckman6604 No. This is a popular interpretation but not one supported by the text. Adam was created to work the ground. That’s the ideal.
@abhbible there's a good possibility they're the sons of one of the Adam's of the Adamic cycle. I think the Adam 50,000 years ago is a better candidate than the one 150,000 years ago.
That was very interesting nugget about king David and it's led me down a rabbit hole...
There were two towns of Bethlehem?! Bethlehem of Zebulun and Bethlehem of Ephratah/Judah?
Of course Adam & Eve are a myth...good grief.
The bible is an absurd book
Only to a fool who doesn't have God in their lives.....
@@bobbysmith5514 The bible was written by ignorant savages
Romans 1:22
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
@@Tera4m
The bible is an absurd book
That is something to consider.
But a few missing names doesn't effect the message or the wisdom of the Bible and it proves that the Bible isn't being doctored.
And more importantly, there are predictions of Jesus in Genesis with Abraham and how could anyone explain Isaiah 53?
@@Move_I_Got_This-b3v The are no predictions of Jesus in Genesis. Isaiah 53 is about the servant of Yahweh, who’s explicitly identified as a righteous remnant of Israel.
@@abhbible
Once you see the depth of the Bible it will give you pause.
The Bible is like one massive parable to solve, but it doesn't tell you that, you have to figure out that part out first.
Abraham has a miracle son and God asks him to sacrifice his only begotten son.
The son asks where the sacrifice ram was Abraham responded "God will provide" and that's exactly what ends up happening.
God Himself comes down and takes on the form of a servant, doesn't tell hardly anyone, and saves the entire world.
The Israelites tried to change the translation of Isaiah 53 but look how that turned out.
Who's more cursed than Israel.
Only 1 country has their back, all other countries voted against them being in Gaza.
So much to say....
@ You’re not really saying anything.
@@abhbible You're in over your head.
If you don't have anyone to plagiarize, then you don't know what to say.
I used to be an aTheist.
Now a Jedi that takes down atheists and theists who don't know God's ways. 🥰
I love how well spoken you are. You communicate clearly and with precision.
It sounds like you read one commentary on the Chronicle genealogies and think that is all that needs to be said on it. I think there is some problems in your analysis. Some of the reasoning is strange. For instance, you say that because Naphtali's genealogy is very short, it isn't relying on history. Why would that be? If anything, I would think its the other way around. If the genealogies are just being pulled out of someone's rear end then I would expect all the genealogies to be complete. The extremely short genealogy of Naphtali then would be the result of lost information and an example of an author not wanting to invent things to make it more robust.
Genealogies in the ancient world aren't like ours. You are calling things contradictions when they are not because you are interpreting them through a modern lens, instead of how the ancients used them. Though I agree that a name in a genealogy doesn't make it true, it doesn't make it untrue that Aram is the father of the Arameans just because the name is the same. You see, genealogies are often "clan geneologies." When you see this in the Bible you are automatically assuming that the genealogies are contradictions when they aren't. The ancient language didn't have a name for father, grandfather, great grandfather, great great grandfather. All were just "Father." So you can skip people in a genealogy. So an ancient genealogy could say, "David the father of Jesus," and another one could say, "Joseph the father of Jesus," and both would be right. That isn't a contradiction.
So Matthew has a genealogy that is split into 3 equal parts of 14 names. Matthew isn't just making a mistake or lying. He is making a statement to his audience. Numbers in the ancient world aren't used like we use them today. They have idiomatic numbers, gematria, idealized numbers, etc. So Matthew is using this style to present a genealogy but it skips generations which is perfectly acceptable by both linguistic and cultural rules.
Finally, the ancient world allowed for the grafting in of someone into a genealogy. We would abhor that today since we are so literal, but in the ancient world this was perfectly acceptable, because genealogies weren't just about a bloodline. They had other functions such as temple rights and land allotment. So for instance, Samuel was given over to temple service by a barren mother who plead to God for a child. She made a vow to give him to the Lord. Temple service requires one to be a part of a certain tribe, the Levites, so Samuel's lineage is grafted into the Levitical line so that he can serve in the temple.
So what you are calling contradictions aren't. What is happening is that you are reading your modern view of genealogies back onto an ancient text with different cultural rules, practices, and purposes. Instead, these are historical genealogies but hard to interpret because of these other factors.
@@blusheep2 I’ve read five commentaries and twice as many monographs and three times as many articles. I’m publishing on Chronicles in the Spring.
My reasoning isn’t strange. You don’t seem to understand what I explicitly said. The poverty of Naphthali’s genealogy is evidence the author didn’t have an extensive, extra-biblical genealogical list which would be necessary for historical precision.
@@blusheep2 Matthew and Luke’s genealogies contradict even if you allow for skips in generations. There are tons of contradictions in the Bible. Ancient people recognized this. Only fundamentalists pretend that contradictions result from a modern lens.
@@abhbible I'm not trying to suggest your not well read. If your publishing then how is it that you recognize the differences between ancient genealogies and our modern ones and if you are aware, then why don't you mention these differences in your video. Why would you instead, call things contradictions from a modern lens when they aren't from an ancient lens? Why would you frame these difference as reasons to know they are false?
_The poverty of Naphthali’s genealogy is evidence the author didn’t have an extensive, extra-biblical genealogical list which would be necessary for historical precision._
Yes, I understand this but this a bad reason then to say that the genealogy is just tradition and not historical. It just would mean that its incomplete. Historical but incomplete. To say otherwise is bad reasoning.
I don't deny there are contradictions. I am not a Biblical inerrancy supporter. I think its dumb because even the doctrine is that the Bible is inerrant in its original autographs but we don't have original autographs. We only have copies and translations so the doctrine doesn't apply to any of the Bibles in our homes and museums. We also know of faulty translations in the past meaning there was quite a few people for a time, reading and studying a faulty Bible. Translations are also, never perfect. You always lose something in translation so even the most faithful translation isn't going to be perfectly accurate to the original.
I do believe its infallible in that it speaks true things about God and I believe that the Bible is trustworthy. If there are 4000 Solomon horses in one book but 40,000 in another, I have no problem with calling that a scribal error and moving on. It does nothing for or against the story and if we are having to rely on this detail to prove or disprove the Bible then I'm not to concerned about the rest.
And to be precise, I didn't say that contradictions only come from a modern lens. I said your presentation on the historicity of the genealogies is faulty because it was done from a modern lens. Therefore you called things contradictions that the ancient audiences would never have done. I'm speaking to your presentation of genealogies not every claim to contradiction made against the Bible. For instance, the number of woman at the tomb "contradiction," doesn't have a cultural explanation and so has nothing to do with a modern lens or an ancient one.
@The incompleteness of Naphthali’s genealogy and the missing genealogies is the point. It’s evidence that they don’t have more information at their disposal. Again, you simply misunderstand.
Whether ancient people thought they contradicted or not is irrelevant to whether or not they in fact contradict. Different people at different times are willing to invent and accept different explanations for irregularities in the text. I don’t see any reason to accept bad, unevidenced explanations just because people did a long time ago.
@@abhbible _It’s evidence that they don’t have more information at their disposal. Again, you simply misunderstand._
But your video is trying to argue that the genealogies are ahistorical. That they are just tradition. You can't reach that conclusion through this example. Lacking a full genealogical list for Naphtali neither invalidates the information about Naphtali, nor any of the other genealogies they did have more complete records or memory of. Do you see what I'm saying? Its not a matter of me understanding your point. I do. Its a matter of that point leading to the conclusion you made that is the problem. The conclusion you made in your video wasn't "they don't have more information at their disposal."
In my opinion, you need to drop that as a premise for your argument.
_Whether ancient people thought they contradicted or not is irrelevant to whether or not they in fact contradict._
NOOoooo..... This is reading modern sensitivities into an ancient text. You are imposing your enlightenment culture on a culture that had different norms and practices. This is called context. If you refuse to consider cultural context then you aren't being faithful to the text and your not being intellectually honest.
For us to say "abhbible's father is John," and to say "abhbible's father is Mark," is a contradiction. (barring there was no adoption, remarriage of the mom and we aren't talking about priests), but that is not so for the ancients because a dad was "father," a grand dad was "father", a clan patriarch was "father." So what ancient people thought, in this case(not always the case), matters in the extreme. This is no "invention" to explain irregularities.
This is archeology. This is textual criticism. This is the evidence of the historical record. Genealogies then don't have the same function of genealogies today. You say your publishing a paper?
Yes they existed thanks 🙏
@@ShermanMays-fw8ko No, they didn’t. You’re welcome 🙌🏽
2 Timothy 4:3
@ Quite right. That’s what you’ve done. Repent.
@@ShermanMays-fw8kothere is nothing "sound" about Biblical inerrancy, and that's a relatively modern, reactionary doctrine.
I think it's a little funny that 2 Timothy 4:4 says: "...and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths."
What's ironic is much of what we know of the life of Jesus from antiquity is myth. The author of 2 Timothy probably didn't believe the 20 or so _gospels_ of his day were myth.