Sheshbazzar

Yes.
He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens. You inquire of me, How can He find fault with the work of His own hands, are these stones yet responsible for not being valuable in His eyes?
Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it; Why hast thou made me thus?
Has not the Maker and Sustainer of all creation, power over all earth, and of that same earth to form both the rocks and the gemstones?
Mountains are raised up, and then reduced into discarded rubble, that a few precious diamonds be formed and preserved for the honor of a crown.
Elohim willing to show His wrath, destroys mountains, cities, nations, and the people as He will.
YHWH gives and YHWH takes away, that the name of YHWH be blessed.
Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth, as stone grinds upon stone, until they be returned into the dust of which they were formed.

Apikorus

Please tell us about the 19th century discovery of Ugaritic records. I ask because the remains of Ugarit were first discovered in 1929.

Garnet

I think the most compelling argument that the Bible isn't the divinely inspired is the canonzation process. Particularly of the NT. There can hardly be a less inspired and more man-made process.

Barbarian

This makes me wonder: wouldn't this kind of benevolent scholarship involuntarily cover the tracks of baseless beliefs? If the ancient Hebrews believed in mythical creatures, but their surviving descriptions fit actual animals due to scarcity of matching points, are we justified to make the fit?

Another issue is the connection made by the supplied links between re-em and Mesopotamian rimu. I seem to remember that rimu is often depicted in the company of another kind of animal, the sirush (spelling is suspicious, I have read this in 1988). The sirush must be a mythical animal or else evolutionary theory is out. So, I am led to ask why are we sure rimu denotes an actual animal and not just another mythical animal, whose depiction is based on actual animals? Why is it not simpler to assume that the rim and the sirush are part of a mythical zoology, and the Hebrews copied the rimu?

rhutchin

Ingersoll does what many people have done who, pursuing thir own agenda, have appropriated those things which are said in the Bible to their purpose and not the purpose intended. This is done by citing selectively a verse here or a verse there and ignoring context or usually, just ignoring anything else that the Bible says, in order that they may justify their personal philosophy. Christ said that the law could be summed up in two commands: Love God and Love your neighbor. By neighbor Christ meant to include all people as He also said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;..."

Is this not easy to understand? Yet atheists as well as all those who feign religion in order to justify their evil deeds ignore this and excise one verse or another from the Bible and proclaim falsely, "Thus saith the Lord." Like Ingersoll, many just plead ignorance of that which the Bible says as if such ignorance proves anything and are, by that means, able to impress those more ignorant than them.

The Bible is easily understood by those who will read it and not understood, or purposely misued, by those who read it only to justify themselves, as Ingersoll did.

Sheshbazzar

Simpler but hardly supportable, as the actual Hebrew references provide such little detail that determining what species of beast(s) the writers had in mind is at best only guess work and conjecture, overlaying the actual texts with beast described in silly mythological tales fabricated a thousand years latter in other cultures and incorporated into the texts under the guise of being "translations", does nothing to reveal what was the original species.
To ascribe the 're-em' to the realm of being "part of a mythical zoology", simply because of an inability to positively identify its species is unjustified and is not good scholarship.

Barbarian

So in this case good scholarship would probably be to somehow convey the level of confidence in the proposed solution, aurochs or mythical or whichever middle eastern antelope it means, and if the confidence level is not high enough, to simply say that we don't know.

Steven Avery

Thanks, correction sent to the source. Looking forward to the change to "19th and 20th century".

Steven Avery

Actually in ancient times a creature that fits the biblical description was described by numerous authors. And we have "dinosaurs" that fit the bill spot-on, and rhinoceri that come close. And lastly (perhaps leastly) some accounts of similar creatures in recent times.

The only difficulty is the morass of evolutionary theory, that bypases the ancient historian accounts and fast-backwards anything labeled as a "dinosaur" some "multi-millions of years".

At any rate, from the Hebrew writings, there is no evidence of a belief in "mythical" creatures, the animal is described in very real, understandable, tangible terms, even if the animal is today extinct. If the re'em was described also as flying, then you would have a real case.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

pharoah

You seem to be indulging in a bit of selectivity yourself rhutchin. What about the verses where Christ said "Hate your family...", "Let the dead bury the dead...", "Obey me or burn in hell", etc.