GE 4:25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him." 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh.At that time men began to call on the Name of the Lord.
Whether you accept the historicity of Adam or not, the Bible shows that pre-Abraham folks around the region shared a common understanding of God. The Bible simply traces the development of man's understanding of God thru Abraham and descendants.
*****
As you know, the Muslims believe the Koran to be the exact words of God, delivered by God. Muslims are not to translate or study the Koran in any other tongue than Arabic--it is a pure language to them, and to translate the Koran debases it. (Translations do exist, nonetheless!) To question the Koran is tantamount to challenging God. God is trapped in the paper, it seems.
The Bible has narratives, prayers, poetry, etc, but the collection as a whole does not discuss itself, but uncovers God. It is not necessarily "scandalous" if there are passages that echo from earlier times in the Bible--nowhere does the Bible claim to originate every idea of God. But thru the collections of writings, God reveals bits of who He is. God can't paint a complete picture of Himself for us using one or two or even one-hundred mediums. And even if one were to memorize the whole Bible, like a Muslim might recite the entire Koran from memory (whether they understand the language or not!), it is forever insufficient. The "word" of God is not a book of paper, but a living revelation:
COL 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
It is so easy to wish God to be only 2-dimensional: merely logical, like Spock--who misses emotional and other dimensions (and therefore, incomplete). But if God could be explained quickly and completely with words, you would surely be bored within an hour--and despise him as less than God... and you would be right!
Here is an attempt to explain what I think: we want God to be completely rational only as we understand "completely rational" to be. We want a completely tame deity; this is a comfort and it's convenient. We can always exactly guess what He might do, and always be ready. We want to KNOW God, but only in that we want to understand something about Him. We long for understanding because we don't feel like we have control, and if we understood God, we'd have control, and maybe, be at peace.
Yet we also hope and expect to discover a God who commands our awe as when we see babies, catapillars, stars, novas, and butterflies. We want to respect Him, to really worship Him and mean it (if He's there). We want to find Him as exciting, exotic, and as thrilling as sex (which I thank Him for). ...There is a deep longing inside us for this, too, isn't there? We hope, but we are quite afraid of being disappointed (you know: you get to heaven, and there's a tacky neon sign that says "Welcom to he ven"...)
I do believe that we have the "Awesome" God, not the "Spock" God. Completely understanding God isn't going to happen. but the consolation is that we can begin to "know" God as exciting, exotic, and thrilling, and found (oddly!) in both sides of the paradoxes before us. And this God will be enough to really satisfy us, forever.
bebu
w/ 2 coppers
