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Careful how you answer, as they there is an etymology there you probably are not aware of.
Jehovah is a distortion of Yahweh. An observant Jew when encountering YHWH while reading scripture aloud will substitute Adonai (Lord). Most English Bibles will substitute LORD. The Masoretic Text applied vowel markings to words. These were developed long after the Jewish scriptures were written. For occurrences of YHWH the vowel markings for Adonai were supplied as a reminder on what to say aloud. Trying to pronounce that combination would come out something like Yehovah. In the era when biblical scholars began working with Hebrew (and Greek) sources many of them were German. The letter Y is very rarely used in German and virtually never as an initial letter. J serves that purpose. So Jehovah would be pronounced Yehovah. Jehovah and Yahweh are one and the same.
Elohim is another matter, although the distinction got blurred over time. In general in most Christian Bibles YHWH becomes LORD and Elohim (and variants) becomes God. Virtually all Christians see no difference between LORD and God, so "which god" is a meaningless question to them. This is also true of Jews. Monotheism is the almost universal rule for Western religions. Which God? THE God to anyone who accepts the Bible as the word of God. As I said the question would be meaningless to them.
I view the first part of the book of Genesis as basically saying that God created everything. It should be noted that Genesis was written for the Hebrew mindset. We (westerners) are of the Greek mindset. By Greek I mean we follow the Greek way of thinking and looking at the world. We want precise answers, facts, figures in order of occurrence and dates.
The Hebrew mindset is primarily interested in concepts, with facts and figures being secondary. What mattered to the Hebrews is that God created the Universe.The order and time of the events were not important to the Hebrew mind.
As I see it you run into problems applying Greek thinking to a Hebrew document.That is why the creation story does not make sense to the scientific mind. Of course we always must bear in mind that God is not limited to obey the laws ofnature. So, if God wanted to create the universe in six, 24 hour days He could.
With that said Jericho dates to 9000BC. No problem to the thinking Christian.
The fact that our Greek view of Genesis does not line up with certain facts has nothing to do with if the Bible is true or that God is real. This is so despite the opinion of Young Earth Creationists.
This is quite amazing because the Hebrews understood Einstein's theory of special relativity that the measurement of time is not a constant but relative to an observer versus another, upon which the energy exerted equates in velocity and/or size. With uncertainty regarding the size, shape, and form of our creator, we cannot speak in units of time to the sequence of creations on earth. And so the hebrews were onto something in their beliefs and connection to genesis even more compelling living in the now, than I would have believed in a past century.
The C in Einstein's equation stands for the velocity constant for speed of light, the medium that allows all information and all evidence and all that we know...to be observed. And sure enough the very first thing got created in genesis on Day 1 was Light. And in the Hebrew context there's sequence but a beginning is a beginning and that beginning was the medium of light.
When examining the universal authenticity of the old testament of the bible, one of the key things I look to find is if the revealed laws of the universe fit the biblical storyline, for it it does then the writer is less likely a poser.
Last edited by Ericthebean; 11-22-2014 at 08:12 AM..
I understood what I said. You did not. And how does this relate to the topic? I fail to see how you not understanding relates to claiming the earth is only 6000 years old.
If you are not familure with the sedimentary layers then I can't help you. Start a thread in the proper place and discuss it if you want to.
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