Re: Christianity leads me to Athesim?

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 01:18:16 +0000 (UTC), Emma Pease put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>
>Some of the more interesting ones are between Samuel/Kings and
>Chronicles
>
>Was it Satan or God?
[snip]
>Three years of famine or seven?
[snip]
>How old was Jehoiachin when he began to reign?
[snip]

Well, the first of these is quite easily resolved, and the other two
are really only a problem for the point of view which believes in
infallible transmission as well as infallible inspiration. The word
"satan" isn't a proper noun, although it's often used as one in
current colloquial religious speech. In the Hebrew of the OT, it's
simply a word meaning "adversary" or similar, and is used for various
individuals who, in different situations, oppose something or someone.
So the phrase "Satan rose up against Israel" doesn't necessarily imply
that it's the same entity which elsewhere is referred to as Lucifer or
the devil - it just means that an adversary rose up against Israel.
And the parallel passage in Samuel makes it clear that God, in this
case, was acting as an adversary to Israel due to his anger at their
sinfulness. So the answer to the question is that it was God in the
role of a satan/adversary to Israel - there is no need to make an
either/or choice between the terms used in the different passages.

The other two (as with most differences in ages or numbers) are quite
likely to be simple transcription errors, and don't pose any real
problems for the majority of Christian theology.

Mark
--
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