re: #573 elbruce

My point is merely that ultimately, you have to decide what you personally believe regarding the meaning of these passages. I don’t. I can only walk a given interpretation so far before I come up against the chasm of faith, and must stop there.

Yes. There isn’t a way to get there without faith. And we do all have to make personal choices about belief.

For me, as a young teenager, i ran smack into the creation story as a clear obstacle to my faith. After buckling down and looking through the etymology, i found that there is a perfectly acceptable (linguistically speaking) way to translate the creation story that removes the contradictions with established science.

In short, one can never actually PROVE that one’s translation is correct. I can only show that a highly valid translation exists which removes the offending connotation, whether it’s about “submissive women” or “6 days of creation”. I can’t prove that i’m right; i can only show that the NT is not unequivocally biased, hateful, or immoral.