TEC said-
Adamah, you have brought Cain into Paul's reasoning. (something you say I cannot do by bringing Christ into it... lol)
I don't follow: how do you explain away Paul talking about Adam and then in the same scripture talking about those who followed, WITHOUT referring to Cain, Abel, Lamech, and the rest of the humans who lived before the Flood (anybody mentioned up to Genesis 4)?
You also have not established that Cain committed "manslaughter" over "murder". (The account in Noah does not specify murder over manslaughter either, for that matter... and I think you completely glossed over it as being a clarification added to the 'you can eat meat', but not meat with lifesblood in it)
So you've figured out the animal dietary addition (to veges), and you got the "don't eat blood with the flesh" part, and you even quoted the correct scripture which climaxes in God's vowing to demand an accounting for spilled blood (homicide), but you don't understand it? Don't feel bad: Genesis 9:6 is hard to grasp, due to the incredibly dense Hebraic wording used which obscurates the message (which is what you get with 3,000 yr old writings). It's why the JWs have adopted their flawed "no blood transfusion" policy, too.
But you STILL haven't provided a scripture to prove your claim that God gave mankind laws before the Flood?
(HINT: there IS a reference to God giving mankind laws before the Flood that exists in Genesis, but you'd REALLY have to know the subject matter. In fact, ask Jesus to tell you: if he knows the Hebrew Bible as well as the Son of God claims, he'd know exactly what I'm referring to.)
I think that just contradicts your position, Adamah... (which you are saying is Paul's position... but I think you are mistaken)... and then you have to make another addendum, calling it manslaughter instead of murder, to justify this position you have taken, calling everyone else confused.
What does Jesus have to say about my reading of the Yahwist's account? He deserves to get his butt chewed out for writing an anecdote that makes Jesus' parables look bush league, and it only confused poor Apostle Paul 1,000 yrs later.
Really, the only confusion here is in the position that you are trying to establish, and the justifications and amendments that you have to make to be able to do so. You have rewritten the reason for the flood as being because men were murdering one another and God forgot to tell them not to murder, so he wiped the slate clean because of his error (which also contradicts the whole not holding men accountable for there not having been a law).
The responsibility for untangling the contradictions rests on you, the believer, and not me: in case you forgot, remember I am an atheist? I don't look at the Bible in a lovie-dovie devotional manner, but as a puzzle with mysteries to untangle.
You have to jump through so many loops... the author of Genesis was confused, Paul was confused, chirstianity is confused (can't argue with you there though... else there wouldn't be so many different understandings of things, lol)... but maybe its you who is confused.
You are confused, as I NEVER said the author of Genesis was confused: he knew EXACTLY what he was trying to communicate with the story, and he was clearly a very clever and intelligent person. The problem was he got too clever for his own good, and wrote a tale that only confused those who misunderstood the account, esp after the historical context changed (which wasn't his fault: he couldn't predict the future changes that would alter the context in which his story was heard). There were rabbis who saw Cain as guilty of manslaughter, who argued with the camp who saw it as murder; there is evidence of redactors who tried to tip the scales to support their opinion (the 'murder' camp, mostly, involving the use of the plural form of 'blood' to overcome the 'two witness' rule), and the tug-of-war that resulted in confusion persisted, until the issue went dormant for centuries and the significance of the original context was lost in the sands of time.
Much simpler: The evil in the world came from the hearts of men... the same place murder came from in Cain... and not from God forgetting to make murder against the law.
And where did the evil that got into the hearts of men come from? Who made the evil that COULD get in men's hearts?
And the account in Cain shows that God DOES warn people against the sin or path that they are taking, personally...or the harm that they are going to commit or even come to as a consequence of their actions, as He also did for Adam and Eve. That is an example that some do not take away from the account, and you are also not seeing. God teaches; God serves; but the choice is always our own what we DO with that. God warned Cain, and told him what he must do... Cain, like many others, did not listen to God. But God obviously spoke to warn men from their path.
Whole lotta jibber-jabber, and yet no scripture showing where God gave mankind law prohibiting bloodshed BEFORE the Flood?
Adam
