Christianity

Reading the Bible in an academic fashion has taught me a skill that has been extremely useful when reading other historical texts, but seems to be something that modern readers seem to be losing. I notice this especially when people struggle to read anything older than X year (e.g. 1960), because it has concepts that they fundamentally disagree with.

I call it “empathy for the author.” When reading a text and trying to understand it, my first goal is to try to learn as much about the author as possible and their worldview. Then, I attempt to understand the points they’re making. I think other people should do the same.

Originally posted on Substack

You know the first verse of the Bible, right?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Gen 1:1 NET

The word for God here is Elohim. There are some interesting tidbits about this:

The noun is in its plural form. Singular would be Eloah. While this seems really controversial, in most of the usages, it’s paired with a singular verb. AKA “created” up there is masculine singular. So it’s often interpreted as a majestic plural.

Originally posted on Substack

I’ve often encountered Christians that believe the world was created in 7 24-hour days, because “that’s what the Bible says” in Genesis 1 and they won’t believe otherwise.

There are a ton of arguments against this “fact,” but I think the most compelling one is the linguistic ambiguity for the word “day” (yom) used in the creation account. First, let’s take a look at an English translation for one of the days of creation: