EarlyActs
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A customer put a review about Sarfati's THE GENESIS ACCOUNT and asks 'I'm not sure how you validate the Bible by using the Bible.'
This is a great question and is not a dead-end. First, the material itself is referring to the objective world that was created. Is there such a world? Yes. So the material is not fantasy. Next, you keep asking similar questions until you realize it is talking about the reality of the planet we are on. It will later refer to places and people that are not just in the Bible.
One can see J. Philips-Griffiths 'Tracing History Through Genesis' for all the threads of thought on this. Cities, rivers, locations are named. Tables of nations are listed.
Then when we realize that there is a 2000 year time period before the flood (roughly) until Abraham, we can then ask what did later people in the Bible ask or say about the early part. There are countless repeat references back as historical. Family law in the Torah depends on it being historical. Then there is Christ, and finally Peter in 2 Peter 3 with a very terse but universal set of references.
Christ used Genesis as warnings about adultery and about the destruction of Israel because of their historical force. What is the point of mentioning the onslaught of a flood as a picture of Israel's destruction in that generation if it is bogus, and, for us, once the event of the destruction of Israel was known history?
Even more broadly, the Bible continually refers outside itself. Whether to the Greek empire or Rome, or Caesar Augustus world-census (Roman world) or Claudius eviction of Jews from Rome.
So it is not self-referencing, at the end of the day.
This is a great question and is not a dead-end. First, the material itself is referring to the objective world that was created. Is there such a world? Yes. So the material is not fantasy. Next, you keep asking similar questions until you realize it is talking about the reality of the planet we are on. It will later refer to places and people that are not just in the Bible.
One can see J. Philips-Griffiths 'Tracing History Through Genesis' for all the threads of thought on this. Cities, rivers, locations are named. Tables of nations are listed.
Then when we realize that there is a 2000 year time period before the flood (roughly) until Abraham, we can then ask what did later people in the Bible ask or say about the early part. There are countless repeat references back as historical. Family law in the Torah depends on it being historical. Then there is Christ, and finally Peter in 2 Peter 3 with a very terse but universal set of references.
Christ used Genesis as warnings about adultery and about the destruction of Israel because of their historical force. What is the point of mentioning the onslaught of a flood as a picture of Israel's destruction in that generation if it is bogus, and, for us, once the event of the destruction of Israel was known history?
Even more broadly, the Bible continually refers outside itself. Whether to the Greek empire or Rome, or Caesar Augustus world-census (Roman world) or Claudius eviction of Jews from Rome.
So it is not self-referencing, at the end of the day.
