The entire Bible is to be believed when you consider being a christian. I talked about language, interpretation and creation. But everything I have written is prone to interpretation. And anything that is interpreted can be believed. It is YOUR choice to believe in something.
I could talk about how humans choose to believe or not, but this is my final introductory article before we start checking the meat of the Bible (play on words intended from a previous part I wrote). Many people have studied the Bible for years. Scientists have even tried to refute the Bible or others have tried to make connection with it. The thing is that whatever people try to prove, it all falls out to be the final choice of the listener, or reader in this case, to believe what has been said or talked about.
Some basic truths to start off:
- God is invisible
- Hell and Paradise are not known in this physical world
- Noone knew Adam and Eve
- Emotions cannot be seen
- and so on, I know you can find many more..
Believe
or
Don't believe
The Bible is based off believing because pretty much all of what is written cannot be checked. A lot of christians will say that their prayers have been answered calling it solid proof that the Bible exists because it talks about it. Others will say that the nature itself has all of the proof necessary to prove the existance of God and Jesus. BUT I, I say something else. The Bible does have many things that can be confirmed by life itself, but it also has many things that can show how twisted things can be and subject to greater studies and verification.
I will talk about preachings, bible studies, books about bibles and humans a little later in this article. For now, let's start with something that caught my attention right at the begining of the Bible. Something I just cannot unhook from.
Genesis 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.
4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?
10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.
11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand;
12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.
14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
That is almost the entire chapter 4 of Genesis right there. I stopped at verse 16 because there is something crucial that needs to be understood. Before chapter 4, we are told about the creation and the fall of men from sin, the sin here is seeking of wisdom. We'll talk about that later.
I have purposely colored the names of the people we are talking about here. This is the introduction of what I would consider "The spread of humans". Remember this in Genesis?
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
I put in red the important parts here. So the main purpose of man, or I should say, humans, was to multiply as well as dominating the earth. So between then and chapter 4, no multiplication was done yet. So Cain is Green and Abel is Blue (or Cyan for those picky on color names). I also put in a red box another little detail that will introduce you to what's following up next.
Genesis 4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
NOW, this is VERY interesting. We have been greeted with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel but can you tell me WHERE did Cain happen to meet his wife? Who is she? Where does she come from? Up to now, the ONLY people that have been introduced are the 4 I have just mentionned, no sisters, no relatives and now, all of a sudden, Cain know his wife. Sometimes, when you want to tell a story, you begin by the end or somewhere in the middle. So, I searched and Cain is nowhere to be found except in this chapter 4.
Genesis 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
This shows that Eve had another son AFTER Cain and Abel. But again, nowhere do we find anything about sons and daughters. Verse 1 and verse 2 of chapter 4 mention that Adam knew Eve, another way to say that they had sex, let's just call things the way they are supposed to be said. So Adam and Eve's first sexual relations gave 3 sons, Cain, Abel and Seth. Now, I do NOT care about what preachers will say about this and what suppositions and other interpretations. A book must be logical, history must be logical. You explain a story, don't leave huge gaps like this!!! Another detail to NOT forget here:
Genesis 4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
It is written that Cain went and lived in the land of Nod. So! I know we are at the begining, but Nod? We have been introduced at the begining with names from rivers in Eden and we can assume that God just had to name something or maybe Adam chose to name these. But if Cain was alone in the east, then where does the name "Nod" come from?
I said I would talk about preachings earlier! When you attend church, you will realise that pastors ALL have the same exact way of preaching. They talk about biblical facts with a few verses to build upon for their message, THEN, the context dissapears. I am NOT saying they get OUT of context, the context here is the Bible reference context. Pastors, preachers or however you name those talking in front in the microphone at church, they use the same exact thing to convince people. They use logical presumptions. AND boy! Are they so good in using those. They often contextualise things using current day-to-day stuff. And when you listen properly, you will soon realise that they go over certain details pretty quickly by doing 1 of 2 things.
Quickly say that a current passage means something without much details, just basic knowledge.
or
Focus on a very Godly or Good or Sinless oriented subject and leave out the bad.
I get so annoyed when I hear them do this. Another thing they do is over-talk. And boy! Do those pastors know how to over-talk. Seriously! The amount of useless details to prove a point is incredibly full of similar points. Pastors also love to take a simple idea and make hour long messages about something that can be understood in 2 sentences and 5 minutes. But, I won't talk about this more because I will get carried away. The subject here is the missing information and the interpretation of that missing information.
Back to our Cain moment. I will NOT copy the entire text of Genesis 5 here because it is boring and not usefull for those believing me. If not, just go check for yourself in a Bible. Just a reminder, I use the King James version for my texts here but any version of the Christian Bible is applicable. So, I said back to Cain, right. Chapter 5 of Genesis explains in detail the decendence of Adam. I will rephrase that, chapter 5 lists and names some of the sons of Adam. I said, Adam, aparently, Eve has no attachment to these children. Eve's name is last seen in chapter 4 before being used as a reference later in the new testament. We also are introduced to how many years passed before Adam "begat" I'll translate to concieved by his seed, let's be clearer, Adam's sperm produced. Where does the word "sperm" come from? Just a question out of the blues like that because you won't find that in the Bible unless you find a new English Bible translation that I don't know of. Anyways...Let's continue.
Cain has NO precision about his years because, may I remind you, Cain was punished to live and a sign was put on him to prevent people from killing him. I would be REALLY curious about how many years he lived before dying. Oh! And have we talked about Noah being a decendant of Adam but the decendant of Cain also stopped on chapter 4. Noah was found good by God. So, right there, we have a very tight focus that only so-called righteous people are going to be named. There is an answer to that and I will answer it in another article. But for this article, let's focus on the missing information.
So Cain and his decendants have no real details and for some reason, Cain found himself a wife, when clearly, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel and Seth were the only known humans as far as we know. Now, amny can speculate on that, but this information is NOT provided. You cannot build any opinion on this because we are missing a heck of a lot of information here. And then, christians are surprised that people do not believe in God?
I will say something about God. Or chall I say, the Creator, to accomodate most religions. Everyone on earth believes in a something or someone, a being or power source that managed to bring humanity to life, everyone. So, we will concentrate later on why did the Bible go over this detail. Because the Bible has one single goal, just one and understanding this ONE goal will manage to clear the questions. But for now, one last observation from the decendant of Adam and I will provide the reference here:
Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
...
3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
The introduction to the book of Adam's generations starts with Seth. OKAY, so where is Cain and Abel? I should presume that since they were introduced earlier, it should not be named because we know them already? But Seth was also introduced earlier and is still repeated here. Is this the same Seth?
We, humans, easily step over things that require too many questions. Religions are based off of that. We talk about things and if it flashes a bunch of red lights requiring answers, we simply tell these people that they lack faith and/or do not believe. A very common comment you will have is that you are not asking the right questions and that God purposely did not mention these details because you do not need them. Seriously? We should all be the same, with the same thoughts and ways of understanding? Let's all welcome diversity (this is called sarcasm, for those wondering). When reading such things, we rarely think about these details and skip them because we all have this tiny little thing inside us that just wants to know the rest of the story. Movies are made like this, skipping over details and driving us right there where the story needs to be told. Action movies where eating is optional, maybe they will put one single meal, oh, and how many movies have you seen where the actore goes to the bathroom? Sylvester Stallone to the toilet doing his number 2, or maybe Sister Act and seeing the Pope doing his thing before sitting down to watch the final show? Anyone? no?
I will finalise this introduction before delving into the center of my blog in the next article. Let me introduce, THIS thing! I have purposely chosen the "Ostervald" french version of the Bible and put the comparison with the english King James version. But I will start off with this little detail that hit me:
Genesis 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
Soooo??? God had NO daughters? And men had no sons??? Are you telling me that Adam begat sons after Eve where God made Adam concieve? Did Adam have a temporary uterus? Did he sex himself? Was Adam the first Mary who got a child by the Holy Spirit? Why does the Bible SPECIFICALLY mention the sons of GOD and the DAUGHTERS of men??? Clearly, the Bible has brought us to some importance in hierarchy:
God
Man (Husband)
Woman (Wife)
then
God
Man
Sons
Seriously, this is starting to be sexist. God created the woman but has no respect for her to the point that he does not even consider them as his own daughters? So any born man is considered a son of God but any born woman is considered a daughter of man?
Now here goes the translations of THIS verse from english, King James to french, "Ostervald":
Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
King James (English)
Genesis 6:3 Et l'Éternel dit: Mon esprit ne contestera point dans l'homme à toujours; dans son égarement il n'est que chair; ses jours seront de cent vingt ans.
Ostervald (French)
I will now provide you the casting of the war of religions arround the world. You can get a few definitions by looking up yourself but to make it easy for you, I will translate the english version to an easier more modern english and then, translate the french version in english so you can see the difference and what I mean by our language being a barier and where interpretation becomes a really big problem.
Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit should not always contest with man because he is flesh: his days will be of 120 years.
King James (David Richard (modern english))
Genesis 6:3 And the Lord said: My spirit will not contest in the man forever; in his waywardness (or folly) he is only flesh; his days will be of 120 years.
Osterval (David Richard (word-to-word translation))
NOW, can you tell me WHICH version is supposed to be the COREECT version of what happened? In english, it talks about man being flesh as something bad to God so he separates himself for this reason. BUT the french side talks about "égarement" which is weirdly translated by "distraction" but has a deeper defined way to say that man has deviated from a good path which is why I translated to "waywardness or folly". But I will not talk about what is correct here. I am simply pointing out that ALREADY, 2 languages that I DO know have totally different meanings for this verse. AND say what you want about what flesh really means and all of the interpretations that you can presume, if I stick to what is written, I interpret things without getting out of the Bible which is the base reference for christians. Here's a last one:
Genesis 5:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
King James (English)
Genesis 5:2 Il les créa mâle et femelle, et il les bénit, et leur donna le nom d'Homme, au jour qu'ils furent créés.
Ostervald (French)
I think you understood what I meant earlier, so I will not retranslate the whole thing but only the part which is REALLY different, the underlined red word. In english, he names them Adam but in fench, he names them Man. I WILL though emphasis on a little detail and that is the capitalization of the "H" in "Homme". Because when refering to man, normally, no capitals are used, but in this case, a capital letter was used to say Man. NOW, again, many could interpret that God created Adam and that Adam is just another word to say Man. BUT, mayt I remind you that the french version is read by french people, not necessarely by bilingual people like me! How do you expect people to understand properly something if the words used are not the same. Why would I need a translator to read the Bible? Does this mean that to understand a book, I need to read it in several languages? And even though most say that the Bible's initial language is Hebrew, seriously, you are going to tell me that you have uttermost certainty that the language spoken in Genesis was Hebrew and that the first Bible was written IN Hebrew? Were you the one who recieved the information by God himself to say for sure that this is the case?
We are looking at things that cannot be checked and have no foundations. We rely on Belief to interpret things that are not visible or that cannot be verified. It's important to know what we see, but it is also important to take a look at what we do NOT see. We cannot see viruses but without anyone willing to see microscopic things, vaccines would not have existed. So focussing soly on what the Bible says without worrying about things that are NOT said is not the proper way to understand the Bible.
One last mention about a small detail I said earlier about books. Many christians swear by the Bible which they refer to as the word of God. BUT here's the detail that makes me lose my mind. There exists many Bible dictionaries and many pastors preach using other well known pastors. AND I will also add that many of the books inside the Bible have been written by another man. One well known man is Paul in the new testament as well as 2 others, John and Peter. So you are telling me, that there is NO doubts about these people's writtings and interpretations? That the Bible dictionaries are free of any mistakes and as worthy as the Bible? Because may I remind christians that the books written by Paul, John and Peter, the dictionaries and comments that have been written concerning the Bible, they have all been written by man. And I will re-itterate that saying that the Bible is inspired by God is NOT a valid argument because inspired and written by are 2 different things. Inspiration can be trapped in many interpretations and I gave 2 examples before.
"Never be blind by what you see; what you cannot see can open your eyes."
David Richard (Qc/Can)
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