How long has man been on earth - an epiphany of sorts

by Dawn 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  Dawn

  I am a believer, but have struggled with some bible subjects. The one that has caused me the most questions, and for the longest time (even as a JW) is the geneology of Jesus found in the first 17 verses of Matthew.

  On the one hand there is an incredible amount of scientific evidence supporting man's existence here on earth for well past 6,000 years. I did a thesis paper in archeology on dating techniques so I am familiar with these techniques and I believe they are credible.

  I could toss this section of Matthew aside as some sort of mistake except for another type of evidence - the mathmatical codes contained in these verses. For example, verses 1-11 (the first main section) there are 49 Greek words used (divisible by 7), of these 49 words, The number of those beginning with a vowel is 28 (again divisible by 7), the number of words beginning with a consonant is 21 (divisible by 7), the total number of letters in these 49 words is exactly 266 (divisible by 7)...for the sake of posting length I will stop here and not list all 24+ mathmatical codes found in the Greek text that are divisible by 7 in this particular section. However - it is clear that there is something special about this set of scriptures - the geneology of Jesus. It seems as though God wanted to make it clear to those who were searching that this was correct - this was the actual geneology - it was not a mistake.

  So now I have colliding data......physical data on the one hand that supports man's existence longer than 6,000 years, mathmatical data on the other hand that supports divine inspiration of a set of scriptures that say the opposite.

  There must be some answer that explains this and encompases both sets of facts/data - something beyond our current understanding. Then it hit me.....the epiphany.........what if the answer isn't what it's all about?! What if it's the search, the journey to the answer that really matters? I remembered the scripture in Matthew when Jesus said to keep knocking, and to keep seeking. If the answer was the most important thing, wouldn't he give it the first time we asked? But he puts the focus on the searching part - not the answer. Then I remembered that old piece of eastern wisdom "sometimes the journey is more important than the destination".

  So perhaps there is an answer that explains it all - but to find it we have to be willing to open our mind to other possibilities, put down our biases, and really see the world, the universe with a "new" mind. And maybe that's the purpose of these tough riddles - to help us grow.

  I will still struggle over this riddle and will toss around possibilities, probably until the day I die. But I realize something now - that's ok. Finding the answer isn't what's most important - it's the fact that I have the freedom to search for it. I no longer have to accept whatever doctrine is spoon fed to me by the "society" and close my mind off to any other facts or possibilities. I have the freedom to wonder, to discover, and to learn. And maybe that's what IS most important.
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  dustyb

  iono, historical and geological evidence points towards around 40,000 years ago....but iono
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  asleif_dufansdottir

  Oh, no...earliest Homo sapiens sapiens were between 100,000 - 120,000 years ago.

  Edited because you might have been thinking of the "Great Leap Forward" that happened (depending) 40 - 50 thousand years ago. Stone tools got better and became standardized, we find evidence of jewelry, cave art, language, etc. Basically, current scientific belief is that the way our brains worked changed then. Of course, paleoarchaeology is limited by what has survived, but it's the best understanding we have so far.

  The Agricultural revolution (we domesticated plants and started farming) happened about 10,000 years ago
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  dustyb

  so...then explain how adam and eve were created only 4000 years (roughly) before christ was born?
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  asleif_dufansdottir

  Can't explain what I don't believe in.
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  gitasatsangha

  Every culture has some sort of mother-goddess figure, and seldom is that mother goddess all good or all bad (i.e. Kali Maa, Durga, Hera). With Eve, they just make her the one who is ultimately your mother, but the one you can blame all your troubles on as well.
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  Satanus

  Dawn

  It appears that you have dipped into gematria. Hebrew and greek languages didn't have number numerals, so they used letters, like the romans also did. From the gematria perspective, the actual words used aren't that important, it's the totals of words, of the phrases and the sentences, when they are turned into numbers and added up. There are also other gematria systems, but this form may be the original.

  Is this a code from god? Well, aliester crowley also wrote some stuff incorporating gematria, and he's satanic, right? To illustrate how jewish scribes w too much time on their hands could have composed the complex system you described, take a comparative look at kaballa, the jewish mysricism/magic system. It gives an idea of the complexity of the jewish mind.

  SS
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  Leolaia

  Dawn....Gematria was widely practiced in ancient times, among pagans and Jews, and thus does not constitute unique evidence of inspiration. It is also well-known that repeating numerical patterns are fairly easy to find -- I'm sure you recall how ppl drew up long lists about the number 11 in reference to the events of 9/11, and in order to assess whether the number 7 is an actual structuring device in the geneology, one should equally pursue other numbers and see whether one can compile a list of repeating patterns of numbers like "4" or "6".

  About the epiphany, I had a similar thread last year about the process of "seeking" and bebu posted this very interesting comment by AW Tozer:

  To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart...Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better: Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in they sight."..David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad cry of the finder... We have been snared int he coils of spurious logic which insists that if we have found HIm we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bibl-taught Christian ever believed otherwise... I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate... Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

  My own comment: "The search, the seeking is such a constant theme in Jesus' teaching. Seek and you shall find. He that seeks shall not rest until he finds. If you ask, what you seek will be given to you. etc. etc. What actually got me thinking about this was the resurrection appearance in GJohn where Mary Magdalene was asked, "Whom do you seek?" John emphasizes the seeking of the person Jesus -- as salvation lies alone in him. The other gospels emphasize the seeking of the Kingdom of God; salvation is guaranteed by finding the Kingdom. Is finding Jesus finding the Kingdom? Or if we find the Kingdom do we also find Jesus? For John, faith alone in Jesus, believing in Jesus guarantees salvation. But that faith is not mere "taking in knowledge" as the New World Translation would have it, or even a heartfelt faith in who Jesus is. Otherwise, how could the praxis of the Kingdom (the godly acts that bring us into God's presence) manifest itself? There are plenny Christians who claim to have been saved but do not reveal the same works Jesus talked about when he preached about the Kingdom. My personal belief is that Jesus is to be found in seeking the Kingdom by following his commandments of love, because even in GJohn, Jesus says that 'whoever follows my words will have everlasting life.' "
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  asleif_dufansdottir

  Leolaia,

  I'm interested in your views on human evolution, given your avatar and your obvious Christianity...

  Your above post didn't seem to address it (if it did I'm just too dense to see it, sorry)
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  Leolaia

  Well, aliester crowley also wrote some stuff incorporating gematria, and he's satanic, right? To illustrate how jewish scribes w too much time on their hands could have composed the complex system you described, take a comparative look at kaballa, the jewish mysricism/magic system. It gives an idea of the complexity of the jewish mind.

  Funny thing I just saw the other day a ring on eBay that once belonged to Aleister Crowley and was given to Jimmy Page which was then given to the seller, and the photo showed the ring had the tetragrammaton and some kaballah symbols.